Hieronymus David Gaub

Hieronymus David Gaub

Hieronymus David Gaub (also: Gaubius, Gaube ; * February 24, 1705 in Heidelberg ; † November 29, 1780 in Leiden ) was a German physician, city doctor and chemist.

Life

Gaub came from a wealthy Protestant family. His father was the hat maker and oldest church mayor Johann Christoph Gaub, and his mother's name was Anna Katharina (widowed Nagel). He had received his first education at the Catholic Jesuit school in his hometown. For religious reasons, the father wanted Hieronymus David to continue his education in Halle (Saale) with August Hermann Francke at his orphanage school . The strict upbringing in Halle aroused anything but an interest in Gaub in further developing his intellectual abilities. This is how Franke later judged his father that he could only be used as a businessman and that he had no talent for pursuing an academic career.

So his father decided to send him to Amsterdam , where Hieronymus David's uncle, Johannes Gaub , worked as a city doctor. From this an interest in the medical sciences was awakened in the young Gaub. With his father's consent, he began studying medical sciences at the University of Harderwijk . Here he had enrolled on June 1, 1722, had attended the lectures there and especially those of Bartholomaeus de Moor (1649–1724). A year later he moved to the University of Leiden , where the then European center of medicine was established. His teachers were the great Herman Boerhaave , Hermannus Oosterdijk Schacht , Bernhard Siegfried Albinus and David van Royen .

Through his zeal he earned the respect of his teachers and became the Boerhaave's dearest student. Under Boerhaave he received his doctorate in medicine on August 24, 1725 with the treatise Dissertatio, qua idea generalis solidarum corporis humani partium exhibetur . This treatise, in which he polemicized against the animism and the pre-established harmony of Georg Ernst Stahl , was to appear in print later. After receiving his doctorate, he went to Paris for a year , where he continued his clinical studies. After a short stay in Strasbourg and Heidelberg, he returned to Holland. On the advice of his uncle he settled in Deventer , where he was appointed city ​​physician in 1726 .

The outbreak of a murderous epidemic in Amsterdam in 1727 prompted the authorities to appoint Gaub there. Here he found the opportunity to show his practical and scientific possibilities and was able to justify the trust placed in him. His assignment in Amsterdam in 1730 resulted in an appointment as Boerhaave's successor, professor of chemistry ( Lector chemiae ) in Leiden. He took up this office on May 21, 1731 with the speech Oratio, qua ostenditur, Chemiam artibus academicis jure esse . On September 20, 1734 he also became a professor of medical pathology, taking over Boerhaave's chair for medicine. He stopped teaching chemistry in 1764. However, he remained director of the chemical laboratory even after Gualtherus van Doeveren came to Leiden as a professor.

In 1760 he had become the personal physician of Prince Wilhelm V of Orange . His reputation was so great that the Russian Tsarina Elisabeth tried in vain to win him over as a personal physician. He also took part in the organizational tasks of the Leiden University and was rector of the Alma Mater in 1746/47, 1762/63, 1774/75 . On leaving these offices he gave the first two speeches De regimine mentis quod medicorum est (published 1764) and the last time on February 9, 1775 De admirandis divinae providentiae documentis in condenda, tuenda et amplificanda Academia Lugduno-Batava . On May 20, 1775 he was retired from his professorship by the curators of the Leiden University for reasons of age.

Act

Gaub, as a student of Boerhaave, was trained with extensive chemical, physical and medical knowledge. In this way he was able to relatively free himself from the one-sidedness of the animistic, chemical and physical teachings of his time and thus retained as independent and personal judgment as possible. He was one of the first to the doctrine of irritability of Albrecht von Haller has used for the interpretation of physiological and pathological processes. He explained the physiological and pathological processes animistically, according to the chemical knowledge of his time, on the basis of the knowledge of mathematics and physics at that time. It should also not go unmentioned that he accepted Stahl's anima teaching on vitalism, which from a modern point of view appears unclear and vague and does not lead to any unity in its fundamental statements.

His lectures on chemistry and medicine were highly valued in his day. With his students he carried out a series of studies in his laboratory, as evidenced by a large number of academic dissertations. So z. For example, he examined the water of the North Sea along the coast, dealt with the volatility of essential oils (discovered the menthol in peppermint oil) and examined the medicinal use of zinc oxide. He used chlorine to fight the plague and used it to clean rooms and houses contaminated with plague.

In addition, he had also dealt with the study of lower animals, as his translation Johannes Swammerdams Bijbel der Natuur of Historie der Insecten (freely translated into German: Bible of nature and history of insects ) shows and led to an insect collection that was sold after his death . His main work is the Institutiones pathologiae medicinalis , which saw new editions eleven times between 1758 and 1784, also in French and German.

Works

• Dissertation inauguralis de solidis humani corporis partibus. Leiden 1725.
• De vana vitae longae a chemicis promissa expectatione. Leiden 1734.
• Libellus De Methodo Concinnandi Formulas Medicamentorum. Lugduni Batavorum: Apud Conradum Wishoff, 1739. Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf
• Libellus de methodo concinnandi formulas medicamentorum. Leiden 1739, 1752 , 1785, Paris 1749.
• Institutiones pathologiae medicinalis. Leiden 1758, Leipzig 1759, Leiden 1763. 8o. Venet. 1766, Leiden 1776, 1781, Vienna 1781, Nuremberg 1787, Paris 1770 (in French), Zurich 1781 (in German), Berlin 1784, St. Petersburg, 1792 ( in Russian ). (Gaub's main work).
• De Regimine Mentis, quod est Medicorum. Leiden 1764.
• Adversariorum varii argumenti. J. Luchtmans, Leiden 1771 (digitized version )
• Oratio panegyrica in auspicium seculi tertii Academiae Lugduno-Batavae 1775. Leiden 1775, (translated into Dutch by P. van den Bosch) Leiden 1775.
• Opuscula academica omnia. Leiden 1787.
• Bijbel der Natuur, of Historie der Insecten. Leiden 1737 (Dutch translation by Johannes Swammerdam)

literature

• August Hirsch : Biographical Lexicon of the Outstanding Physicians of All Times and Nations. Volume 2, Urban & Schwarzenberg, Vienna / Leipzig 1885, p. 505.
• Carl Ferdinand Gräfe: Encyclopaedic dictionary of the medical sciences. Verlag Veit & Comp., Berlin 1835, p. 463. ( online )
• Werner Leibbrand :  Gaub, Hieronymus David. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 92 f. ( Digitized version ).
• August Hirsch:  Gaub, Hieronymus David . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1878, pp. 416-418.
• Matthijs Siegenbeek: Geschiedenis der Leidsche hoogeschool, van hare oprigting in the years 1575, dead het Jaar 1825. Volume 2, Verlag J. Luchtmans, Leiden 1832, pp. 191–193. ( online , Dutch)
• Jorissen: Gaubius, Hieronymus David . In: Petrus Johannes Blok, Philipp Christiaan Molhuysen: Nieuw Nederlands Biografisch Woordenboek. Volume 3, (NNBW) Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis (ING), AW Sijthoff, Leiden 1914, Sp. 431-432. (Dutch)
• Abraham Jacob van der Aa : Biographical woordenboek der Nederlanden, bevattende levensbeschrijvingen van zoodanige people, who zich op eenigerlei wijze in ons vaderland vermaard made. Volume 7, Verlag JJ Van Brederode, Haarlem 1862, p. 47 ff. ( Online , Dutch)
• Doris Schwarzmann-Schafhauser: Gaub, Hieronymus. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 461.

Web links

Commons : Hieronymus David Gaub  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Life data, publications and academic family tree of Hieronymus David Gaubius at academictree.org