Johann Peter Frank

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Johann Peter Frank, lithograph by Adolph Friedrich Kunike , 1819

Johann Peter Frank (born March 19, 1745 in Rodalben , Margraviate Baden ; † April 24, 1821 in Vienna ) was a German doctor and is considered the founder of public hygiene and a health service based on social medicine.

biography

Johann Peter Frank was the eleventh of fourteen children of a general store. He went to school in Eusserthal , in Rastatt near Baden-Baden and in Bockenheim in Lorraine , where he attended a Jesuit school. He studied 1761 philosophy at the University of Metz , was in 1762 at the University of Pont-à-Mousson his doctorate of philosophy, but decided in 1763 against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to study theology to medicine in Heidelberg and Strasbourg to to study. He obtained his doctorate in medicine in Heidelberg in 1766.

After working as a country doctor in Rodalben, Bitsch , Zaisenhausen and Bruchsal Frank was 1774 personal physician of the Prince Bishop of Speyer . Later he was given the management of an institution in Deidesheim and a hospital in Bruchsal, where he established a school for surgeons. He married in 1767, his wife Katharine died of childbed fever, the son six months later. In 1770 he married Marianne Wittlinsbach, with whom he had two sons, including the later physician Joseph Frank (1771–1842), who was born in Rastatt on December 23, 1771 , and a daughter. By a margravial decree of July 11, 1772, Frank was appointed "midwife master and land acchoucheur". His teachers in the field of obstetrics were the Heidelberg doctor Franz Gabriel Schönmetzel (1736–1785) and the famous obstetric school Johann Jakob Frieds (1681–1796) in Strasbourg .

In 1779, Frank published the first of six volumes of his main work "System einer medicinischen Polizey" . In the section “On the restoration of gymnastics and the same advantages in public education” he presented the health, ethical and cultural significance as well as the personality-building function of physical exercises and explained a number of useful exercises. These include "walking, hiking, running, jumping, throwing, ice-skating, sledding, ball games, fencing, horse riding, dancing, archery, cold bathing, swimming, stilting and climbing". After Frank initially took on a teaching position in Göttingen in 1784 , he became professor at the Medical Clinic in Pavia and General Director of Medical Services in the Austrian Lombardy in 1785 . As a professor at the Vienna General Hospital , Frank began fundamentally modernizing the institute in 1795. In 1804 he and his son Josef Frank were appointed to the Imperial University of Vilnius , where he also introduced modern structures and curricula. From 1807 to 1808 Frank was the personal physician of the Russian Tsar Alexander I at the court in Saint Petersburg . On December 19, 1814, he became a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris. Frank died in Vienna in 1821 as a result of a stroke and is buried in a grave of honor in Vienna's central cemetery (group 32 A, number 3).

Fundamental importance of his work

Johann Peter Frank is considered a pioneer in the field of social medicine and the public health service and one of the founders of hygiene as a university subject. The six-volume “System of a Complete Medical Police” is his main work. It took Frank nearly four decades to write it. It was the most comprehensive attempt to date to regulate all public and private life from a health perspective. His advocacy of better training for doctors, nurses and midwives, better financing of the health system and compulsory medical studies for Viennese surgeons made Frank a contemporary who was considered uncomfortable.

Frank advocated a fundamental improvement in hygiene in public buildings, more light in hospital wards, green spaces in cities, sports and gymnastics in schools and breaks in working hours. He was also not afraid to make this clear to the rulers for whom he worked. Alexander von Humboldt said of him: "(I) confess that rarely has a man made such an impression on me."

Frank's work on the "medical police" initiated the development of "medicalization", which is still irreversible and difficult to break through, in which medicine acquired the authority to interpret almost all social questions of health and illness. When developing a “social hygiene” in the early 20th century, Frank's thoughts and ideas were taken up.

Works

  • System of a complete medical police. 1779-1819.
  • Small fonts of practical content. 1779.

Johann Peter Frank Medal

The Johann-Peter-Frank-Medal is the highest award of the Federal Association of Doctors of the Public Health Service (BVÖGD) for special services to the public health system of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has been awarded at the association's annual federal congress since 1972 .

Appreciation

In 1875 the Frankgasse in Vienna- Alsergrund (9th district) was named after him.

The "Frank - van Swieten Lectures", an international course on strategic information management jointly held by the TU Braunschweig , the University of Amsterdam , the University of Heidelberg , the UMIT in Hall near Innsbruck, the University of Leipzig and the Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences are in recognition of his services named after him in hospitals. The Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History included him in the Sports Honor Gallery in Lower Saxony in 1998.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Baumann: Pfälzer Lebensbilder , Third Volume, 1977, pp. 145 ff.
  2. ↑ Werner E. Gerabek: Frank, Joseph. In: Encyclopedia of Medical History. 2005, p. 421.
  3. ^ Peter Schneck : Johann Peter Frank (1745-1821) and the midwifery in the 18th century, in: Die Heilberufe , Heft 3, 25th year, Springer Verlag Berlin 1973, pp. 85-88.
  4. ^ Eduard Seidler : History of the care of sick people , 3rd edition Kohlhammer Stuttgart 1972, pp. 111–113.
  5. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter F. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 15, 2019 (French).
  6. ↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart : History of Medicine. Facts, Concepts, Attitudes , 6th edition Springer Heidelberg 2009, p. 181; 7th edition. History, theory and ethics of medicine , Springer textbook Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 159 + 160, ISBN 978-3-642-34971-3 . doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-642-34972-0
  7. ^ Peter Schneck: History of medicine systematically , Uni-Med Verlag Bremen and Lorch / Württ. 1997, to JP Frank pp. 103, 138, 140-141, 162, ISBN 3-89599-138-4 .
  8. ^ Karl-Heinz Leven : History of Medicine. From antiquity to the present , CH Beck Munich 2008, pp. 48–49, ISBN 978-3-406-56252-5 .
  9. ^ Alfons Labisch : Homo Hygienicus. Health and Medicine in Modern Times , Campus Verlag Frankfurt / New York, pp. 88–90, ISBN 3-593-34528-5 .
  10. ↑ Leven individual evidence 4
  11. ↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart : History of Medicine , 2nd edition. Springer textbook Berlin Heidelberg 1994, p. 203, ISBN 3-540-57678-9 . (6th + 7th editions, individual proof 3)
  12. ↑ Article
  13. ↑ publisher's advertisement
personal data
SURNAME Frank, Johann Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1745
PLACE OF BIRTH Rodalben
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1821
Place of death Vienna