Jacob Fidelis Ackermann

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Jacob Fidelis Ackermann (born April 23, 1765 in Rüdesheim , † October 28, 1815 there ) was a German physician .

Life

Ackermann was the son of the Rüdesheim aldermen Bernardus Ackermann (1709–1790) and his wife Maria Loretta Fink (1732–1779).

At the age of nineteen he enrolled in medicine at the University of Würzburg in 1784 , where he became a student of Karl Kaspar von Siebold . He later switched to Samuel Thomas Soemmerring at the University of Mainz . In Mainz, Ackermann completed his studies in 1787 with a doctorate to become Dr. med.

Ackermann then went on an almost two-year study trip, which took him through Germany, especially to Göttingen, to Vienna and Italy (Pavia). He stayed for several months with Johann Peter Frank , the General Director of Medical Services in Lombardy . Ackermann returned to Mainz in 1789 and was able to complete his habilitation that same year. He then taught at the University of Mainz as a private lecturer in forensic medicine and medical police .

After the death of Johann Fibig (1758–1792), Ackermann became the successor to his chair of botany . On May 10, 1795 he married Maria Eva Thecla Linn. With her he had a daughter and two sons. In 1796, after Soemmerring left the company, Ackermann was given his chair in anatomy . Building on Soemmerring's research, Ackermann was able to demonstrate the semidecussatio nervorum opticorum (half-crossing of the optic nerves).

During the French occupation, the University of Mainz was closed in 1798 and a kind of academy for medicine was established, the École spéciale de médecine de Mayence . Ackermann was entrusted with the management and appointed its first professor. During this time already, one focus of his anatomical research was hermaphroditism .

In 1803 Ackermann carried out investigations and experiments on the newly beheaded Johannes Bückler , known as "Schinderhannes", and his followers directly under the guillotine . On behalf of the "Medical Private Society in Mainz", it was supposed to be determined with electric shocks, among other things, when the human body was actually dead. Ackermann subsequently used the bones of Schinderhannes as a scientific object of investigation. The skeleton was prepared for the first time without the aid of wires - it was held by the tendons. He later took the skeleton with him when he was appointed to Heidelberg University .

In 1804, Ackermann accepted a call to the University of Jena and took over the Loders chair for anatomy and surgery . In order to be closer to his family, who lived in Rüdesheim, Ackermann accepted a call to Heidelberg University in 1805. There Ackermann took over the chair for anatomy and physiology , advocated the construction of a new anatomical theater and was also significantly involved in the creation of a polyclinic , of which he became the first director. In 1812 he became a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences .

At the age of fifty, Jacob Fidelis Ackermann died on October 28, 1815 in Rüdesheim of a kidney infection .

Ackermann was active as a scientist in a variety of fields. He was a fan of chemiatry . As a scientist, Ackermann had always been an opponent of his colleague Franz Joseph Gall (and his phrenology ). In February 1807 Gall and Ackermann met at the Anatomical Theater in Heidelberg, during which Ackermann was not very professional. He yelled at Gall and argued inconsistently. He also presented preparations that could not really support his argument. The local press honored this by attesting Gall a superior appearance.

As an important doctor of the Romantic era , Ackermann is still on an equal footing with Franz Anton Mai (1742–1814).

Reception in gender research

Ackermann's work was discussed in particular in the German-speaking gender research. Claudia Honegger (1991) counted Ackermann among the authors who assumed that the sexes were anatomically incomparable. Through Ackermann and following him, every bone and every tissue was thought of as gender. Heinz-Jürgen Voss (2010) contradicted this reception . Ackermann set physiological processes centrally and worked out differences in the sense of “more and less”. So Ackermann u. a. the female and male genitals are described as corresponding to one another.

Works (selection)

  • On the physical difference between man and woman except for the genitals. [Dissertation] Translated with a preface and some remarks by Joseph Wenzel . Winkoppische Buchhandlung, Mainz 1788 ( digitized version ).
  • About the cretins, a special type of human in the Alps. Ettinger Buchhandlung, Gotha 1790 ( digitized version ).
  • Attempt at a physical representation of the life forces of organized bodies. 2 volumes. Varrentrapp and Wenner, Frankfurt am Main 1797/1800 (digital copies: Volume 1 , Volume 2 ); Edition with a supplement: Friedrich Frommann, Jena 1805 (digital copies: Volume 1 , Volume 2 ).
  • The apparent death and the rescue procedure. A chrimiatric attempt. Andreä, Frankfurt am Main 1804 ( digitized version ).
  • About the relief of difficult births, especially about the medical ability for the development of the fetus. A letter to the Electoral Palatinate Bavarian staff surgeon, Dr. Brünninghausen in Würzburg. Jena 1804 ( digitized ).
  • Infantis androgyni historia et ichnographia: Accedunt de sexu et generatione disquisitiones physiologicae et tabulae V. neri incisae. Maucke, Jena 1805.
  • Gall's doctrine of the brain, scheduler and organs judged and refuted from the point of view of experience. Mohr & Zimmer, Heidelberg / Mohr, Frankfurt 1806 ( digitized version ).

literature

  • Axel W. Bauer and Anthony D. Ho: “Not just artificial in a hospital”. Two hundred years of Heidelberg Medical University Polyclinic and its path from city practice to blood stem cell transplantation. Universitätsklinikum, Heidelberg 2005 (patient treatment in the former Dominican monastery: Jacob Fidelis Ackermann as the first Heidelberg outpatient clinic (1805–1815), pp. 11–17).
  • Werner E. Gerabek : Ackermann, Jakob Fidelis. In: Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (Hrsgg.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 6.
  • Marion Hofmann: The doctor Jakob Fidelis Ackermann (1765–1815) and his ideas of “apparent death”. Diss. Med., University of Regensburg, 2004 (biographical information on Ackermann: p. 83 ff .; overview of Ackermann's works: p. 141 ff.).
  • August Hirsch :  Ackermann, Jacob Fidelis . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 36.
  • Claudia Honegger : The order of the sexes. The Sciences of Man and Woman 1750 - 1850. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 1991.
  • Magnus Schmid:  Ackermann, Jacob Fidelis. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 37 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Heinz-Jürgen Voß : Making Sex Revisited: Deconstructing gender from a biological-medical perspective. Transcript, Bielefeld 2010.
  • Walter Zielinski: Jacob Fidelis Ackermann, Loder's successor in Jena. Diss. Med., University of Jena, 1954.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ JF Ackermann: De discrimine sexuum praeter genitalia. Medical dissertation Mainz 1788.
  2. ↑ G. Mann: Schinderhannes, Galvanism and the experimental medicine in Mainz around 1800. In: Medizinhistorisches Journal. Volume 12, 1977, pp. 21-80.
  3. ^ Members of the previous academies. Jakob Fidelis Ackermann. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, accessed on February 12, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Sara Doll: Fidelis Ackermann - An anatomist against skull theory , in: Sara Doll, Joachim Kirsch and Wolfgang U. Eckart (eds.): When death serves life - Man as a teaching aid , Springer Germany 2017, p. 20+ 21st doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-662-52674-3
personal data
SURNAME Ackermann, Jacob Fidelis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German medic
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1765
PLACE OF BIRTH Rudesheim
DATE OF DEATH October 28, 1815
Place of death Rudesheim