Gregor Horstius

This article deals with the physician and anatomist Gregor Horstius. For the physician Gregor Horst see Gregor Horst (1626–1661).

Gregor Horstius, copper engraving from the “Opera medica” , 1661

Gregor Horstius (born November 5, 1578 in Torgau , † August 9, 1636 in Ulm ) (also Gregor Horst in the non-Latinized form ) was a German physician and anatomist at the University of Giessen ( Academia Ludoviciana ), founded in 1607 . Because of his outstanding work as a physician and his rationalization of medical science at a very early stage, his contemporaries dubbed him “Practicus prudens” (experienced practitioner) and “Aesculapia of the Germans”. He attempted to combine the hermetic medicine of Paracelsus with the classical Hippocratic medicine. In the course of his work, his teaching of physiology and anatomy was mathematized, which in this form was to determine the rational medicine of the 18th century. Along with Andreas Vesalius, he is regarded as a pioneer of anatomy in modern times. His motto, mentioned in portraits, was "Ratio et experientia" (reason and experience).

Life

Horstius was born as the son of the Torgau citizen and master builder Georg Horst (1534–1584) and his wife Anna. Bornitius born. From the second marriage of Anna, who was widowed at an early age, Horstius' half-brother Jakob Müller (1594–1637) emerged, who later also worked as a professor of medicine in Giessen . Horstius studied medicine and philosophy from 1597 at the University of Helmstedt and from 1600 at the University of Wittenberg . In Wittenberg he acquired the academic degree of a master's degree in philosophical sciences in 1602 and then concentrated on studying medical sciences. After study trips to Bavaria, Swabia, the Alsace, Austria and Switzerland, he arrived in the academic year 1605/06 at the University of Basel , where he arrived March 27, 1606 as a doctor of medicine doctorate . In the same year he returned to Wittenberg, where he participated in the disputation there until 1607, before going to Salzwedel as a doctor in the last year mentioned .

Title page of the dissertation De natura motus by Jakob Müller chaired by his half-brother Gregor Horstius, Giessen 1617

Since he already enjoyed a high reputation for his writings, he was appointed professor secundus of the faculty to the chair for anatomy and botany in Giessen in 1608 . The following year he became the personal physician of the university's founder, Landgrave Ludwig V of Hessen-Darmstadt, through which he gained considerable political influence. On December 4, 1615 he married Hedwig Stamm (* July 8, 1593 in Gießen; † November 15, 1634 in Ulm), the daughter of the Gießen rentmaster a. University economist Daniel Stamm (* 1564 in Alsfeld; † April 8, 1621 in Gießen) and his wife Anne (née Lincker). Together they had six children, of whom Gregor Horstius (1626–1661) also became an anatomist and, due to his editing of the zoological monumental work of Conrad Gessner, became a zoologist known in his time . Another son of Gregor Horstius, Johann Daniel Horstius (1616–1685) became a professor of medicine in 1637 at the Giessen University, which had moved to Marburg . A later second marriage, which he entered into in Ulm in June 1636 with Johanna Rabus, the widow of the Ulm doctor Christoph Fingerling, remained childless.

Calculation of a muscle contraction using a parallelogram , (De natura motus 1617)

Gregor Horstius carried out the first public sections in Giessen, following the custom of modern anatomy . With the Landgrave's approval, the female corpse of an executed child murderer from Nidda was made available to him for a section in 1615 , followed by a section of a male corpse in the "Anatomia publica" in 1617. "All lovers of self-knowledge" were invited to these sections through public posters. Horstius also dealt with questions of corpse conservation and presented new techniques.

In 1608 he set up the medical teaching garden ( Hortus medicus ) , which still exists today and is the oldest botanical university garden in an unchanged place.

With his Gießen book "De Natura Humana", published in Wittenberg in 1612, he presented his textbook on anatomy. It is still inspired by the Basel School of Vesalius, but was written with the intention of using it in anatomical teaching at universities. In addition to teaching anatomy, he also dealt with the causes of scurvy , important infectious diseases such as measles , rubella , smallpox and the plague . He criticized his colleagues who did medicine non-empirically, without investigation.

Probably due to the looming turmoil of the Thirty Years' War , Horstius left the Giessen University in 1622, before it was closed in 1625 and relocated to Marburg. He became the first city ​​physician in Ulm , where he died of gout in 1636 . His writings received further editions even after his death, and a collection of his important works (Opera Medica) appeared in the Netherlands in 1661.

Fonts

• De Mixtis in genere, in qua proponuntur propria principia mistorum, ipsa mistio, et ea, quae misti naturam in genere consequuntur. Meißner, Wittenberg 1603.
• Nobilium Exercitationum De Humano Corpore Et Anima Libri duo. Berger / Gorman, Wittenberg 1607.
• Decas problematum medicorum, ad precipuarum febrium cognitionem et curationem inserviens. Crato, Wittenberg 1608.
• Disputationum medicarum viginti, continentes universae medicinae delineationem locis Hippocratis et Galenicis ut plurimum illustr. Berger, Wittenberg 1609.
• Little book of the Schorbock. Hampelius, Giessen 1611.
• Decas pharmaceuticarum exercitationum, add. totidem casibus specialibus. Chemlin, Giessen 1611.
• Dissertatio de natura amoris. Chemlin, Giessen 1611.
• De Natura Humana Libri duo, Quorum prior de corporis structura, posterior de anima tractat. Ultimò elaborati, Commentariis aucti… Cum præfactione de Anatomia vitali & mortuâ pro concilatione Spagyricorum & Galenicorum plurimum inseruiente Bergerus, Wittenberg 1612.
• De Morbis, eorumque casis liber. Chemlin, Giessen 1612.
• De Anatomia vitali et mortua. Casting 1612.
• De Natura motus animalis et voluntarii. Exercitatio singularis ex principiis physicis, medicis, geometricis et architectonicis deducta. Chemlinus, Giessen 1617.
• Dissertatio De causis similitudinis et dissimilitudinis in foetu, respectu parentum…: Cvi annexa est Resolvtio Quæstionis De diverso partus tempore, inprimis´q; quid de septimestri & octimestri partu sentiendum. Chemlin, Giessen 1618.
• Kurtzer report of the deteriorating or child blatants / as well as measles / rubella or child spots. Chemlin, Giessen 1621.
• Centuria problematum medicorum therapeutichon, continens gravissimorum affectuum cognitionem et curationem, juxta principia Hippocratica, Galenica et hermetica deductam. Endter, Nuremberg 1636.
• Gregor. Horstii: Opera medica. Nuremberg 1660, Gouda and Amsterdam 1661 (posthumous collection of his writings)
• Gregorii Horstii, D. Dissertatio De Natura Thermarum . Giessae 1618, online edition of the Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library

literature

• Johann Meckel: Christian corpse preaching: Bey of the rich and respectable corpse celibate / Deß Edlen / Ehrnvesten and highly learned Mr. Gregorii Horsten / dero Medicin Wolfamous Doctorn, ordered Physici Primarii, and Collegii Medici Directoris. Ulm, 1636, ( digitized version )
• Horstius, Greg. a famous German medicus. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 13, Leipzig 1735, column 950 f.
• Christian Gottlieb Jöcher : General scholarly lexicon . Johann Friedrich Gleditsch , Leipzig, 1750, vol. 2, col. 1716, ( digitized version )
• Friedrich Wilhelm Strieder : Basis for a Hessian scholar and writer history from the Reformation to the present day. Cramer, Kassel, 1786, p. 181 ff. ( Digitized version )
• August Hirsch , Ernst Julius Gurlt : Biographical lexicon of the outstanding doctors of all times and peoples. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Vienna a. Leipzig, 1886, vol. 3, p. 282, ( digitized version )
• Jost Benedum : On the history of the medical faculty. ( Memento from June 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Festschrift for the 375th anniversary of the Medical Faculty Giessen. 1982.
• Ulrike Enke: "... for us the finest perfume" - historical remarks on anatomy and anatomical lessons at the Hessian universities from the 16th to the 18th century . In: Hessisches Ärzteblatt. No. 12, 2005, pp. 819-824.
• Claudia Ragheb: The pathology of Gregor Horstius compared to the galenists of his time, explained using the example of Jean Fernels. Dissertation. Giessen 1996.
• Ulf Eisenreich: The "contagious" diseases in the work of Gregor Horstius (1578–1636). Dissertation. Giessen 1995.
• Ortwin Schuchardt: Anima rationalis and higher sensory functions: Theories of the "German Aesculapian" Gregor Horstius. Dissertation. Casting 1994.
• Isabel Wilhelm: Diseases of the brain and sensory organs in case reports by the Giessen doctor Gregor Horstius (1578–1636). Dissertation. Casting 1994.
• Hans Theodor Koch: The Wittenberg medical faculty (1502-1652). In: Stephan Oehmig: Medicine and social affairs in Central Germany at the time of the Reformation. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig, 2007, ISBN 978-3-374-02437-7 , p. 313;
• Hans-Joachim Böttcher : Horst (ius), Gregor . In: Important historical personalities of the Düben Heath. AMF - No. 237, 2012, p. 47.

Web links

• Works by and about Gregor Horstius  in the German Digital Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Magdalena Hawlik-van de Water: The beautiful death. Ceremonial structures of the Viennese court at death and burial between 1640 and 1740 , Freiburg / Wien 1989, pp. 203–211 (on "The methods of embalming from antiquity to modern times").