Joseph Frank (medic)

Joseph Frank (1771-1842)

Joseph Frank (born December 23, 1771 in Rastatt , † December 18, 1842 in Como , Italy ) was a German physician and professor of pathology during the era of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. He is one of the most influential advocates of the medical reform movement of Brownianism , from which he later distanced himself.

Life

Joseph Frank was the eldest son of the founder of public hygiene, Johann Peter Frank . The first phase of his career is characterized by close collaboration with his widely renowned father. After studying at the University of Pavia with Lazzaro Spallanzani , Alessandro Volta and the physician Antonio Scarpa , which he graduated in June 1791, he worked as an assistant in the hospital there, which his father had run since 1785, and as a tutor . When his father became a professor at the General Hospital in Vienna in 1795 , Joseph took over the clinic in Pavia and, as an associate professor, also took over its courses.

Joseph Frank had a keen interest in the teaching of the Scottish doctor and neurophysiologist John Brown , which Giovanni Rasori , who had been professor of pathology in Pavia since 1796, spread in Italy. In search of an alternative to the classical humoral pathology and the mechanical concepts of the body concept coined by Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle , Brown had developed an arousal theory. According to this, a healthy person is in a state of moderate “excitability”. With excessive excitability (sthenia) or inadequate excitability (asthenia) it comes to the disease. In the first case, sedative therapies are used , in the second, stimulants.

In 1797 Frank published a paper on the "healing method in the clinical school in Pavia". The 89-page preface by his father, who here and there keeps his distance from Brownianism , but showered his son with praise, benefited the reception of the book as well as the reputation of Brown's teachings.

Shortly before Napoleon's troops moved into Pavia and the university was closed, Joseph Frank also went to Vienna. In 1802 he undertook a "scientific trip" to Paris, London and other places in Great Britain, where he inspected hospitals and scientific institutions and met leading doctors and political figures (including Napoleon Bonaparte ). In Edinburgh he discovered that Brown's conception no longer fitted in with the times and had almost been forgotten. In clinical practice, it turned out that reducing the number of diagnosis and therapy categories to a few categories did not deal with the complex reality of diseases. Although Frank published a "Outline of Pathology According to the Laws of Arousal Theory" in 1803 , he gradually moved away from Brownianism in the course of his further career.

Frank's account of this "trip to Paris, London, and much of the rest of England and Scotland" (1804) is a treasure trove of information on contemporary hospitals, schools, and personalities. At that time, as the information on the title page shows, he was a teacher of pathology and general therapy at the Imperial Russian University of Vilnius ( Lithuania ) and a member or corresponding member of a number of respected scientific societies.

In 1804 his father Johann Peter received an invitation from the Rector of Vilnius University. During the ten-month stay he set up a clinic and worked out a reform plan for the medical faculty. When he went to St. Petersburg and for a short time became personal physician to the Russian Tsar Alexander I , Joseph took over the clinic and the department of pathology. In his lectures he used a work by his father (“De curandis hominum morbis epitome”) and the “Institutionum medicinae practicae” by Giovanni Battista Borsieri . In the "Acta Instituti Clinici" published from 1808 to 1812, he finally broke away from Brown's concepts, which now appear to him as a fetter.

In England, Frank had seen the establishment of the Royal Jennerian Society (1803), which aimed to eradicate smallpox with the still new vaccination . In 1808 he founded a vaccination institute in Vilnius , one of the first of its kind in Europe.

The experiences in Paris had made him very skeptical about the impact of the revolution and the implementation of its ideals. The polemical treatise on the influence of the French Revolution on medicine, published in 1814, shows a disillusioned conservative spirit. The ruin of many universities, the collapse of the book trade, the death of many good doctors, the collapse of medical correspondence across national borders, increasingly speculative thinking, the economic crisis and other things overshadowed the few good sides in his opinion. The latter included the introduction of physics into medicine, the establishment of experimental clinics in which new methods and remedies were investigated, as well as the advances in surgery, which was previously considered to be of minor importance, and its association with medicine.

In 1824 he retired because of an eye problem. He died in Como, Italy .

Works

• Frank, Joseph: Heilart in the clinical school of Pavia. With a preface by Johann Peter Frank. From the Latin, with practical comments by Friedrich Schäfer. Vienna: Camesina, 1797. (Translation from: Ratio instituti clinici Ticiensis a mense Ianuario usque ad finem Iunii anni 1795 (digital copy ) )
• Frank, Joseph: Explanations of the Brownian medicine theory. Claß, Heilbronn am Neckar 1797 (digitized version ) 2nd revised edition, Claß, Heilbronn 1803 (digitized version )
• Manual of Toxicology, or the Study of Poisons and Antidotes. Based on the principles of Brownian medicine and modern chemistry, worked on by Joseph Frank, primary physician in the general hospital in Vienna, previously an extraordinary teacher of practical medicine at Pavia. Schaumburg, Vienna 1800 (digitized version)
  • Manuel de toxicologie, ou, doctrine des poisons et de leurs antidotes AA Bruers, Anvers 1803 (digitized version )
  • Manuals di tossicologia, ossia di dottrina di veleni e contravveleni. Luigi Mussi, Parma 1804 (digitized version)
• Frank, Joseph: Instructions for knowledge and choice of the doctor for non-doctors. Schaumburg, Vienna 1800 (digitized version)
• Frank, Joseph (ed.): Health paperback from a society of Viennese doctors. K. Schaumburg, Vienna
  • for the year 1801 (digitized version)
  • for the year 1802 (digitized version)
• Frank, Joseph: Journey to Paris, London, and much of the rest of England and Scotland in relation to hospitals, supply houses, other poor institutes, medical schools, and prisons. Vienna: Camesianische Buchhandlung, Volume I 1804 (digitized version ) Volume II 1805 (digitized version )
• Joseph Frank's Outline of Pathology According to the Laws of Arousal Theory; Edited with explanatory additions and remarks after his lectures. Vienna: Doll, 1803.
• Frank, Josephus: Acta Instituti clinici Caesareae Universitatis Vilnensis. Lipsiae: Schaefer, 1808-1812.
  • Annus primus 1808 (digitized version)
  • Annus tertius, quartus, quintus et sextus 1812 (digitized version )
• Frank, Joseph: De l'influence de la Révolution française sur des objets relatifs à la médecine pratique. Vilna: Zawadzki, 1814 (digitized version)
• Frank, Iosepho: Praxeos Medicæ Universæ Præcepta. Lipsiae: Kuehn, 1811-1843
  • Partis primae, volume primum, continens Prolegomena, Doctrinam de febribus atque de inflammationibus generalem. 1811 (digitized version)
  • Partis secundae volume primum, cesarean section prima, continens Doctrinam de morbis systematis nervosi in genere, et de iis cerebri in specie. 1818 (digitized version)
  • Partis secundae volume primum, Sectio secunda, continens Doctrinam de morbis columnae vertebralis, singulorum nervorum aliisque ex variis systematis nervosi partibus ortum habentibus nec non oculorum, aurium, narium et cavitatum nasalium. 1821 (digitized version)
  • Partis secundae volume secundum, Sectio prima, continens Doctrinam de morbis laryngis, tracheae et corporis thyreoidei, thecae thoracicae, pleurae, mediastini, thymi et pulmum. 1823 (digitized version)
  • Partis secundae Volume secundum, Sectio secunda, continens doctrinam de morbis diaphragmatis, pericardii, cordis, arteriarum, vebarum et animi deliquiorum. 1824 (digitized version)

literature

• Müller, Richard: Joseph Frank (1771–1842) and the Brownian teaching. Zurich medical historical treatises, new series No. 83. Zurich: Juris-Verlag, 1970
• Kondratas, Ramúnas Antanas: Joseph Frank (1771-1842) and the Development of Clinical Medicine: A Study of the Transformation of Medical Thought and Practice at the End of the 18th and the Beginning of the 19th Centuries. Harvard University, 1977.
• Kondratas, Ramúnas: The Brunonian influence on the medical thought and practice of Joseph Frank. Medical History, Vol. 32, Issue S8 (Brunonianism in Britain and Europe), 1988, pp. 75-88

Remarks

1. ↑ According to the English country doctor Edward Jenner (1749-1823), who had developed the vaccination against cowpox .