Joseph Hillmer

Joseph Hillmer (* 1719 in Hainburg an der Donau ; † unknown) was a famous oculist and full professor at the Berlin Collegium Medicum .

Life

As the son of a barber, he learned to play starring early on and first traveled to the Habsburg countries , and from 1746 to Central Germany. Like all star engravers of that time, he always left his place of work quickly. He boasted that he was "not a marckschreyer or some ordinary inexperienced country cheater".

After staying in Saxony, he arrived in Berlin in 1748 . How it came to the appointment of King Friedrich II as full professor in the Collegium medico-chirurgicale on January 22nd, 1748 is inexplicable, especially since Hillmer had neither a doctorate nor proof of a proper education. He never gave lectures (not even later) and only stayed briefly in Berlin, only to travel on again with royal permission to stab. He sought operations on well-known personalities, but John Taylor often got ahead of him . 

Bookable stays: 

• 1748 Lübeck, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Haarlem Delft, The Hague, Rotterdam
• 1749 London, Paris, Lyon Zurich Geneva, Madrid, Lisbon
• 1750 Venice, Vienna, Breslau back to Berlin
• 1751 East Prussia, the Baltic States and St. Petersburg

Hillmer affair

Hillmer worked in St. Petersburg for an astonishingly long time . In the presence of Tsarina Elisabeth , he operated on a lady-in-waiting on both sides of the Carskoe Selo , who later became painfully completely blind. Despite many failures, he was sponsored by the Tsarevich (later Tsar Peter III ). Recent scientific studies suspect a secret political function in the area of ​​tension between Prussia and Russia, especially since Hillmer was not a simple oculist, but a Prussian full professor. Probably only for this reason he was able to stay in St. Petersburg for so long and defy the considerable headwind coming from professional circles. Eventually he had in December due to an upper report of 32 Petersburg doctors for quackery The affair was even a book of 176 pages from the personal physician of the Czarina and director of the medical office, the country should refer Herman Kaau Boerhaave , documented and is the first work in ophthalmology in Russian. It contains interesting presentations and success statistics of Hillmer's catastrophic work with indications and complications that were already considered malpractice at the time.

Further work

From 1752 he lived in Berlin again and, as an oculist, had to fight off strong competition from Valentin Andreas Köhring and Christian Gottlieb Cyrus . In 1756 he traveled to Denmark, Baden, Avignon, 1762 to Stockholm and Copenhagen and in 1771/72 to the Netherlands. He was never able to gain a foothold in Berlin again. There is evidence of his last work near his home in 1776 in Pressburg .

literature

• Jean-Paul Wayenborgh (Ed.):  IBBO. International Biography and Bibliography of Ophthalmologists and Vision Scientists.  Volume 1, Oostende, Belgium, 2001 (Hirschberg History of ophthalmology. The monographs; volume 7)
• Aloys Henning: The Hillmer Affair. An oculist from Berlin in St. Petersburg 1751 . European university publications. Series VII Medicine Vol.5. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt a M Bern New York Paris. 1987. ISBN 3-8204-8665-8 .
• Aloys Henning: Joseph Hillmer - a guild and contemporary of John Taylor from Austria.  In: Communications of the  Julius Hirschberg Society , Frank Krogmann (Ed.) Vol. 2 -2001. Publishing house Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg. Pp. 299-330.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Julius Hirschberg : History of ophthalmology . In: Th. Saemisch (ed.): Handbook of the entire ophthalmology . 2nd Edition. tape 13 . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1899.
2. ↑ Kaau-Boerhaave, Herman (1751): Cancellariae Medicae Acta cum oculista Iosepho Hillmero, impressa sumtubus (sic!) Directoris Petropoli, typis Academiarrum Scientiarum MDCCLI / Medicinskoj Kanceljari Postpuki s okulistom losiform prura Akadm kostiform Gil'merburg, napecatano Kostom Complete translation from Russian in Aloys Henning 1987 (see above)