Daniel de Superville (medical doctor)

Daniel de Superville, copper engraving by Christian Fritzsch (1744)

Heraldic ex-libris from his time in Stettin / Berlin

Mezzotint -Portrait 1754 with the Bijou the Bayreuth Lodge Zur Sonne

Daniel de Superville , also Daniel von Superville (* December 2, 1696 in Rotterdam , † November 16, 1773 ibid) was a Dutch medic in the Prussian, Bayreuth-Brandenburg and Brunswick services. He was the first chancellor of the University of Erlangen .

Life

Daniel de Superville came from an originally French Huguenot family who had come to the Netherlands as religious refugees. He was the third son of the merchant Jacob de Superville; his uncle Daniel de Superville (the elder) († 1728) was a well-known Reformed theologian.

He studied medicine sciences and was on November 1, 1718 at the University of Utrecht Dr. med. PhD. He went to Leiden and enrolled at Leiden University . Since Christmas 1719 he was a member of the Walloon Church in Leiden and in 1721 was elected a deacon (head). Here he married Katharine Elisabeth le Cointe on April 26, 1722.

In June 1722 he left Leiden. He went to Stettin , where the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I (Prussia) had appointed him as court and French colonies medicus . At the Szczecin Gymnasium he was to receive a professorship in anatomy and surgery, which had already been assigned elsewhere. He began to hold medical demonstrations free of charge in 1724 ; on May 9, 1726, at the insistence of the king, he received an extraordinary professorship in anatomy and surgery.

1725 became a member of the newly established Collegium Medicum ; he received the title of Land Physicus for Prussian Pomerania and was responsible for visiting the Pomeranian pharmacies. The Imperial Academy of Natural Scientists appointed him on December 10, 1739 under the name Apollophanes III as a member, as did the Societät der Wissenschaften in Berlin.

In Berlin he became the personal physician of King Friedrich Wilhelm I, whom he healed from dropsy . In 1738, Crown Prince Friedrich recommended him to his sister Wilhelmine , Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth . Superville treated her in 1738 and soon thereafter entered her full service. In Bayreuth de Superville was appointed personal physician, real privy councilor and director of the mines . After he had already been accepted into the Freemason's lodge “ To the Three Worlds” in Berlin, in 1741 he was one of the founding members of the Bayreuth lodge Zur Sonne and became its secretary.

When the new Friedrichs University was founded , which first opened on March 21, 1742 in Bayreuth, then moved to Erlangen and reopened here on November 4, 1743, the Margrave Friedrich III. Daniel de Superville as director of the university. When the directorate was transformed into a curatorium with the margravial declaration of November 16, 1746, de Superville became chancellor (cancellarius perpetuus) of the university. He donated his library and a collection of physical, surgical, and anatomical instruments to the university.

In addition to the university administration, he worked several times as an envoy for the margrave, for example in The Hague in 1745 . For reasons that were not entirely clear, he resigned from office on March 2, 1748 for health reasons.

De Superville first moved to Bremen . In the middle of 1749 he came to Braunschweig and became a doctor to Duke Karl I , brother-in-law of the Bayreuth margravine. In 1751 he was the ducal envoy in Holland. In 1754 he encouraged the Duke to found the Art and Natural History Cabinet , which later became the Ducal Museum and thus the two present-day museums, the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum and the Natural History Museum . In 1755 he went on a long trip to Holland and France, where he acquired various collections of ancient coins, cut stones, statues, inscriptions and curiosities for the duke. Even anatomical specimens were made for the museum on Superville's instructions.

The aftermath of the Seven Years' War brought this collecting activity to a standstill and led Daniel de Superville to return to his homeland. The Duke granted him a generous pension in 1761. Superville moved to Voorburg near The Hague,

After the death of his wife in 1769, he married Marie Marthe, daughter of Pierre le Cointe and Elisabeth de Gounyle and widow of Corneille de Normandie, Baillif of the city of Vlissingen , in May 1770 .

He died in Rotterdam on November 16, 1773 and was buried in the French church (Vrouwe Kerk) in Leiden.

Works

• De sanguine et sanguificatione. Utrecht 1718 (dissertation).
• L. Henning in suo pro compositione theriacae et mithridiatii laboratories bonum successum et optimum eventum opto. Szczecin 1725.
• Progr. De anatome a multis calumniis et falsis imputationibus vindicanda. Szczecin 1728.
• Of the real benefit of the human. Urine inspection. Szczecin 1728.
• Thoughts of quack ointments, medicis and patients: From what everyone can teach himself how to protect himself from quack ointments and after-doctors, to entrust righteous and conscientious medicis to her and to honor them. Stettin 1733. 11618868 in the VD 18 ..
• Some Reflections on Generation, and on Monsters, With a Description of Some Particular Monsters: By Daniel de Superville, Privy Counselor and Chief Physician to His Most Serene Highness the Margrave of Brandenburg-Bareith, President of the College of Physicians, Director of the Mines and of All Medicinal Affairs in the Margravite, Member of the Imperial Academy Naturae Curiosorum, and of the Royal Society of Berlin. Translated from the French by Phil. Hen. Zollman FRS Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 41 (1739), pp. 294-307 ( doi: 10.1098 / rstl.1739.0044 digitized version ).

literature

• Superville (Daniel De) . In: Dictionaire des sciences médicales: biography médicale. Volume VII, CLF Panckoucke, 1825, pp. 284-285.
• Ernst Sehling: Daniel von Superville. The Chancellery at the University of Erlangen. Veit, Leipzig 1893, OCLC 163085434 .
• Paul Zimmermann:  Superville, Daniel von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 54, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1908, pp. 634-637.
• L. Knappert: Superville, Daniel de . In: Petrus Johannes Blok , Philipp Christiaan Molhuysen (Ed.): Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek . Part 5. N. Israel, Amsterdam 1974, Sp. 842 (Dutch, knaw.nl - first edition: AW Sijthoff, Leiden 1921, reprint unchanged).
• Superville, Daiel de. In: Biographical lexicon of the outstanding doctors of all times and peoples. Volume 5, Urban & Schwarzenberg 1962, p. 477.
• Gerhard Pfeiffer: Daniel de Superville. In: Franconian pictures of life. New series of CVs from Franconia. Volume 8. Degener, Neustadt an der Aisch 1978, ISBN 3-7686-9046-6 , pp. 147-167.
• Renate Wittern: Wilhelmine von Bayreuth and Daniel de Superville: Prehistory and early days of Erlangen University. Ceremonial lecture on the occasion of the 36th annual meeting of the chancellors and senior administrative officials of the scientific universities of the Federal Republic of Germany at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg from 29.09. until October 1st, 1993. Erlangen-Nürnberg: Rector of the Friedrich-Alexander University 1993 (Erlangen University Speeches; Volume 3, No. 46) OCLC 165101189 .
• Superville Daniel, de. In: Encyklopedia Szczecina. Volume II, Uniwersytet Szczeciński, Szczecin 2000, ISBN 83-7241-089-5 .
• Alfred Walz: Superville, Daniel de. In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Dieter Lent et al. (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon - 8th to 18th century . Appelhans Verlag, Braunschweig 2006, ISBN 3-937664-46-7 , p. 689 f .

Web links

Commons : Daniel de Superville (Medic)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Publications by and about Daniel de Superville in VD 18 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Member entry of Daniel von Superville at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 20, 2016.
2. ↑ Freemasonry and the world. Erlangen 1843, p. 4 ( digitized version )