Johannes May

This article deals with the doctor Johannes May. For other people, see Johann May .

Johannes May , also Maius (born September 19, 1592 in Römhild ; † June 9, 1671 in Coburg ) was a Franconian doctor who worked as a city ​​physician in Römhild and Coburg.

Life

Johannes May was the son of Römhild councilor and mayor Johann May († 1606) and his wife Anna Streitt († 1637). He attended the city school in Römhild and from 1607 to 1613 the Hennebergisches Gymnasium in Schleusingen . The mother seems to have been wealthy, because although she lost two houses in Römhild in the city fire on September 7, 1609, Johannes was still able to attend grammar school.

In April 1613 he enrolled at the University of Jena with his cousin Georg Schubhard . However, from September 1613 to February 1614 he was unable to attend the course due to a " febris tertiana ". Until September 1614 he attended, among other things, "chemistry" lectures by Zacharias Brendel . He then moved to the University of Wittenberg to study medicine - again interrupted by an epidemic fever - and was taught there by Daniel Sennert and Tobias Tandler . He left Wittenberg in 1618 and moved to the University of Marburg , where he was already treating patients himself under the supervision of Johannes Hartmann . In the same year he moved to the University of Giessen , where he heard Gregor Horstius . On November 7, 1620, he received his doctorate in medicine with theses on cachexia at the University of Basel , a few weeks before his brother, the lawyer Josua May (1595–1641), who received his doctorate in both rights .

After completing his studies in 1620, he settled as a practicing doctor in his hometown of Römhild. Here he was appointed city and country physician in Römhild by Duke Johann Casimir in 1625 and held this office until 1647. In 1640 he and his wife donated a legacy of 40 guilders for the Coburg city school. During the Thirty Years' War May suffered particularly from billeting of soldiers and officers and from looting.

In 1634 he bought a house in Coburg (today: Rückertstrasse 1) and moved there with his family. From 1650 to 1655, however, he temporarily relocated back to Römhild. In 1655 he was called back to Coburg by Duke Friedrich Wilhelm as the successor to the late city physician Georg Bergner . In addition to Johann Christian Frommann , professor at the Casimirianum in Coburg, May was also employed as a personal physician at court. The private library he set up as well as the medical articles that were printed have not survived.

May was married a total of four times. His marriage to Sabina Steinacker (1594–1640), daughter of the lawyer Philipp Steinacker , resulted in two children, including Anna Sabina May (1626–1706), who later became Johann Daniel Gihnlein's mother . Widowed for the first time, May married Dorothea Schöppach (1620–1644), a daughter of the princely Saxon war councilor Johann Schöppach, in 1642. However, she died on April 7, 1644 in childbed , so that Johannes May was widower again. In 1647 he married the widow of the Kulmbach Chancellor Johann Krebs, Anna Barbara Trummer (1618–1659). In 1660 he finally married Ursula Mühlschneider, a daughter of the princely Saxon treasurer Georg Mühlschneider, who survived him.

With increasing age, May suffered from poor walking. When he wanted to get to his books lying at a table on May 27, 1671, he made a mistake and knocked over a chair that first crashed into his head and then fell over with him. He was unable to fully recover from the incident due to his stoutness. After pulmonary edema , he died on June 9, 1671 and found his final resting place in the Salvatorfriedhof in Coburg in the grave of his first father-in-law, Philipp Steinacker. He gave the city of Coburg the reputation that polygamy was common here. This strange call was due to a passage in the inscription on his grave slab "MARITUS QUATUOR UXORUM". The tombstone is still preserved in the former crypt hall at the Salvatorkirche .

literature

• Ernst Cyriaci: The history of houses in the city of Coburg up to 1937, Coburg, 1945–1948
• Armin Leistner: Old grave monuments and epitaphs of the Coburg country, in: Yearbook of the Coburg State Foundation, published by the Coburg State Foundation, Coburg, 1977, page 95–162
• Johann Hoffmann: Funeral Sermon - Jesus medicus omni virtute medicarum genere florens; […] The former noble / high honorary vests / and highly learned / Hn. Johann May / Med. Doct. and a long time hero well-ordered / well-deserved Stadt-Physici alhie zu Coburg […], published by Johann Conrad Mönch, Coburg, 1671 ( online )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Johannes Maius: Themata inauguralia de cachexia, Basel 1620 (VD17 39: 153897U).