He studied at the Universities of Heidelberg and Leipzig, and later was an assistant to Ernst Leberecht Wagner (1829–1888) and Heinrich Curschmann (1846–1910) at the medical clinic in Leipzig. In 1888 he obtained his habilitation, becoming head of the medical clinic at Jena in 1892. In 1899 he became director of the clinic at the University of Marburg, and soon afterwards served as professor of special pathology and therapy of internal diseases in Greifswald (1900–02).
Among his written works was a landmark textbook on pathological physiology that laid a scientific basis for clinical medicine. This textbook was first published in 1893 as Grundriß der allgemeinen klinischen Pathologie (Later known as Pathologische Physiologie), and eventually ran to fourteen editions. Krehl was a catalyst behind the founding of the "Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research", which today is known as the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg.[2]
Selected writings
Grundriß der allgemeinen klinischen Pathologie, (Fundamentals of General Clinical Pathology), later known as Pathologische Physiologie (Pathological Physiology); Leipzig (1893)
Die Erkrankungen des Herzmuskels, In: Carl Nothnagel's: Experimentelle Pathologie und Therapie, Bd. 15/1, Holder, Wien (1901)
Krankheitsform und Persönlichkeit, Thieme, Leipzig (1929)