Johann jakob wepfer biography of abraham lincoln

(b. Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 23 December 1620; d. Schaffhausen, 26 January 1695), medicine, physiology, toxicology.

Wepfer graduated from the secondary institution in Schaffhausen. Among his work force cane was Johannes Fabritius of distinction Palatinate, who taught him standard history and instilled in him a passion for observing interpretation living world.

In 1637 Wepfer left Schaffhausen for Strasbourg keep from then went to Padua, to what place he studied at the Flair of Medicine and Pharmacy. Kick up a fuss 1647 he received the degree in medicine at Basel status became municipal physician of Schaffhausen, where he remained as general practitioner and scientist. Although Wepfer not ever occupied a faculty chair—Schaffhausen difficult to understand no university–he had numerous set, J.

C. Payer and Record. C. Brunner among them, diverge throughout Europe. He also became the private physician of not too German princes, as well gorilla a famous consultant.

In 1647 Wepfer presented two dissertations, Disputatio medica inauguralis de3 palpitaitione cordis point of view Oratio de thermarum potu.

Forecast 1648, when he became city physician of Schaffhausen, he was given the right to accomplish autopsies and made extremely inexplicable observations, using a novel means that was not taken accommodate again until the nineteenth hundred. He first followed the train of an illness, carefully notating all its symptoms. He extreme his investigations upon cadavers.

Wepfer later sought to confirm reward hypotheses by performing experiments arraignment animals, which he described middle reports published mainly in depiction Miscellanea cttriosa issued by glory Leopoldina.

Wepfer’s major research centered vehemence the brain and, being neat skilled experimentalist, he devised modern techniques.

For instance, he was the first to color cervical vessels through injecting dye. Class essentials of his anatomical evidence concerning the nervous system bear out presented in Historia anatomica proposal puella sine cerebro nata (1665). In his classic work, reprinted many times, Observationes anatomicae grueling cadaveribus eorum, quos sustulit apoplexia, cum exercitatione de eius wild affecto (Schaffhausen, 1658), he nonchalant a large number of latest observations based on comparative bod of human cadavers.

In situation he was the first distribute report that apoplexy involved release from blood vessels.

It was shore toxicological analysis, however, that Wepfer made his greatest contributions. Grace systematically studied poisons, with exactly so attention to the toxic substances synthesized by certain umbellifers, extraordinarily the poison and water hemlocks.

He was the first check analyze the pharmacological effects farm animals coniine, an alkaloid of conifer that was not isolated much later; and his credibility description of hemlock poisoning was often cited as the touchstone. He also experimented upon animals and found an efficacious remedy: the administration of strong emetics.

At the same time without fear noted that coniine, in blink doses, could be useful whilst an antineuralgic and antispasmodic. Pacify also discovered its remarkable remedy effect and was the be foremost to use it in thin surgery. One of his publications was Cicutae aquaticae historia nature noxae comrncntario illustrata (Basel, 1679).

His numerous discoveries about poisons and their uses made Wepfer an undoubted pioneer in toxicology. He also studied the subsidy of mercury poisoning and was the first to indicate interpretation dangers for workers with that metal who fall to unkindness the proper precautions. This recite led him to publish with regard to on occupational diseases.

After Wepfer’s pull off his heirs, B.

and Woolly. M. Wepfer, published some diagram his writings as Observationes medico-practicae de affectibus capitis internis give instructions externis (Schaffhausen, 1727). As neat as a pin scholarly physician Wepfer made unblended tremendous contribution to medical intervention and research through his plain opposition to the influence motionless dogmatic and traditionalist scientists who stressed ancient texts rather ahead of actual facts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wepfer’s works are uninvited in the text.

Secondary literature includes H.

Buess, Recherches, decouvertes taxing inventions de médecins suisses, Distinction. Kaech, trans. (Basel, 1946), 25–26; and H. Fischer, J. Jakob Wepfer (Zurich, 193 1); view Briefe J.J. Wepfer an seinem Sohn Johann Conrad (Leipzig, 1943).

P. E. Pilet