Christoph Frick (surgeon)

Christoph Frick (also Christoff Frike, Christophorus Frikius, Christopher Fryke; * 1659 in Ulm ; † after 1697) was a barber surgeon, traveler to India and the author of a travel book in three languages.

Life

Christoph Frick was baptized in Ulm on November 7, 1659. His father Christoph Friedrich was a bleacher , his mother Katharina the daughter of a goldsmith and merchant. Christoph was born as the eighth of thirteen children. Although it was only a decade after the end of the Thirty Years' War , the city's linen weaving and bleaching operations recovered quickly, so that the children probably grew up in well-sheltered circumstances. The eldest son, Melchior Frick (1651–?), Studied medicine and, after completing his doctorate, worked in Jena from 1674 as the city doctor of Ulm. In the same year Christoph began an apprenticeship with Bartholomäus Heckhing, the master builder of the barbers' guild and city doctor, which he completed in 1677. His mother died that same year. The illegitimate birth of a child he had conceived with a maid hastened the departure. Frick left Ulm at the end of March. In the following years he moved via Vienna to Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Saxony. After six months in the service of the Zurich surgeon Georg Herrliberger, he went to Waldshut via gangs and finally reached the Netherlands on the Rhine.

In Amsterdam he took the compulsory exam and was hired as a surgeon by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). On May 31, 1681 he ran out of the Ternate to Batavia. Near the Cape of Good Hope, Frick survived the sinking of his ship, made his way to the cape settlement and continued the voyage on the Europa a few weeks later .

After arriving in Batavia (now Jakarta) on December 13, 1681, he first worked as a surgeon on the Ansjol farm. He also took part in the 1682 campaign against the Sultan Agung of Bantam under Major General Saint-Martin ("Shamartin"). Then he got to know most of the company's branches as a ship surgeon: Amboina , Banda , Ceylon , Formosa ( Taiwan ), Bali , Surat . In 1685 his ship anchored for about five weeks in front of the Dejima trading post in Nagasaki Bay , so that he could also take a brief look at closed Japan.

When the contract with the company expired in 1685, he decided to return to Europe. The crossing on the ship De Beurs from February to August went without major problems. In Rotterdam, however, a gunshot wound that he sustained in Bantam gave him trouble again. He had to undergo an operation in Amsterdam, and he stayed in Cologne again for several weeks, so that by the time he arrived in Ulm at the end of November 1685 he had largely used up his savings.

After his recovery he worked in Memmingen for some time. After he had passed an oral exam in 1686 and had demonstrated his practical skills in rubbing ointments and in preparing medicinal plaster, he was appointed master craftsman on July 16, 1686 by the city council of Ulm. With the marriage shortly thereafter, the foundations for a secure future were actually laid, but Frick, like many returnees from the Far East, had difficulties with the bourgeois life and household management. The paternal inheritance was soon used up, the inn "Zum Einhorn" bought in 1688 did nothing to improve the situation. The debts increased, and finally he fled the city in the mid-1990s, leaving his wife and four children behind. Frick was expelled from the guild and his picture was removed from the master book.

According to a report drawn up at the time in the mayor's office, Frick is said to have shot a customs officer on a trip to Prague in a dispute over his goods and fled to Holland via Denmark, but even then there were doubts whether this was not invented to keep the creditors away.

In June 1695, Frick set out again with the rank of junior surgeon on the Driebergen for the East Indies, where he served in Bantam. In November 1697 he left Batavia on the Lands Welvaren and landed in Texel in June of the following year. Possibly he moved east a third time in 1717.

Frick had experienced a lot and probably demonstrated it again and again. In 1692, M. Wagner in Ulm printed his report in octave format and added a few engravings as well as a portrait. In 1700, Simon des Fries in Utrecht published a Dutch translation of the travelogues of Frick, Elias Hesse from Saxony and Christoph Schweitzer from Württemberg in one volume. In the same year an English edition was published based on this edition, but Hesse's text omitted. The Dutch version was reissued in a revised form in 1705.

plant

• Christoff Frikens East Indian Räysen and War Services / Or a detailed description / what time such / namely from A. 1680. bit A. 1685. at sea / as on land / in public meetings and skirmishes / in sieges / storms and conquests of the Heydnische places and cities / in Marchiren and quarters / with him and his accompanying camerades every now and then. Since then, in particular, the Bantamian War on Gross-Java [...] presented and designed, etc. Ulm, printed by Matthæo Wagnern, 1692. ( digitized ULB Sachsen-Anhalt )

• Reys nae en door East India, van C. Frikius. In: Drie seer Aenmercklijcke reysen nae en door veelerley west in East India; Gedaen van Christophorus Frikius, surgeon: Elias Hesse, Bergh-Schrijver: Christophorus Schweitzer, Boekhouder; Yeder bysonder, van 't jaer 1675 dead 1686. Bevattende, nevens noyt beschrevene gedenckwaerdigheden, oock. Een eygentlijck beright van den laetsten Bantamschen oorlogh, en de veroveringh van geheel Groot-Java door de Hollanders. Desgelijcks van de Staet of the Sillidaische goudmijn van d'EE Oost-Indian Compagnie op Sumatra. Everything van de schrijvers in eygener persoon bygewoond. Vertaeld door S. de Vries. Utrecht, Willem vande Water, 1694.

• Dito. The tweeden print, avoided and improved. Amsterdam, 1705.

• A relation of two several voyages made into the East-Indies / by Christopher Fryke, surg. and Christopher Schweitzer. The whole Containing an Exact Account of the Customs, Dispositions, Manners, Feligion, & c. of the several Kingdoms and Dominions in those Parts of the World in General: But in a more particular manner, Describing those Countries which are under the Power and Government of the Dutch. Done out of the Dutch by SL London: For printed [sic] D. Brown, S. Crouch, J. Knapton, R. Knaplock, J. Wyate, B. Took, and S. Buckley, 1700. (digitized version )

literature

• H.-D. Rose: The work of German doctors in the service of the Dutch East India Company (1602–1797), illustrated using the example of the Ulm surgeon Christoph Frick. Dortmund 1982 (dissertation).
• L. Schaling: Frikius of Stom in a glass of water. Amsterdam 1992 (diploma thesis, historical letterkunde)
• R. van Gelder: The East Indian Adventure. Germans in the service of the United East India Company 1600–1800. Convent, 2004. ( Het Oost-Indisch avontuur. Duitsers in dienst van de (1600–1800). SUN, Nijmegen 1997 )

Remarks

1. ↑ Melchior Frick defended a dissertation Medica De Poris Corporis Humani in November 1670 with Johann Theodor Schenck in Jena and received his doctorate in July 1674 also in Jena with Rudolf Wilhelm Crause with a Disputatio Inauguralis Medica De Alvi Fluxu . He penned a large number of medical writings, including Melchioris Fricii Medici Ulmensis Icon Podagrae; seu, Accurata delineatio repraesentans morbi podagrici historiam, causas, prognosin, et curationem. Ulmae, Typis Gassenmejerianis, 1693. and Melchioris Fricii Medici Ulmensis Tractatus medicus de virtute venenorum medica. Ulmae Impensis Authoris, Anno 1701.
2. ↑ Rose (1982)
3. ↑ Rose (1982)
4. ↑ Rose (1982)
5. ↑ Rose (1982)
6. ↑ The most important data for the crossing and return of VOC ships can be found in JR Bruij / FS Gaastra / I. Schöffer: Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries. The Hague, Nijhoff, 1979 (RGP, No. 166 and 167).
7. ↑ Schaling (1992); Van Gelder (2004)