In his work on rheumatic myocarditis, Aschoff described the characteristic lesion (Aschoff body or nodule) and presented a histopathological picture of myocarditis that was to exert a great influence on the classification of the disease. Translated in Willius & Keys, Cardiac classics, 1941, pp. 733-39.

Aschoff’s theory of the enterogenous origin of appendicitis.

In an earlier paper on this subject (Münch, med. Wschr., 1922, 69, 1352-56) Aschoff introduced the term “reticulo-endothelial system”; as early as 1914 he grouped certain phagocytic cells into his system.