Nicolaus Witte

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Nicolaus Witte , from 1666 Nicolaus Witte von Lilienau (born December 6, 1618 in Riga ; † January 5, 1688 ibid) was a German-Baltic doctor and first city ​​physician in Riga.

Life

Nicolaus Witte was a son of councilor Hans Witte († 1623) and his wife Anna, geb. The same . Johann Witte and Henning Witte were his cousins. He first attended the city school, then the high school in Riga. From September 1640 he studied at the University of Rostock at the same time as his Riga teacher Lorenz Bodock was appointed professor of rhetoric there. From there he went in the fall of 1642 at the University of Leiden , where he in 1648 to Dr. med. received his doctorate. In between he spent 1647 at the University of Franeker . It is possible that the violent attacks on Cartesianism that year in Leiden were a trigger for this change of location. During his time in the Netherlands he responded to three disputations: the first in Leiden in 1645 dealt with ascites , the second in Franeker in 1647, chaired by Johannes Antonides van der Linden, on the causes of arthritis , and in the third, his inaugural dissertation in Leiden 1648, it was about the plague . In all three writings, Witte represented very modern physiological views, probably shaped by his teacher Johannes Walaeus (1604–1649). At that time he took over William Harveys very new insights into the blood circulation and dedicated his disputation of 1645 to René Descartes . He dedicated his disputation of 1647 to Thomas Bartholin , whom he met in 1646 in Leiden.

After further travels through France, Sweden (here he witnessed the coronation of Queen Christina in 1650 ) and Germany he returned to Riga.

In 1652 he was appointed second city physician of Riga. In 1663 he rose to become the first city physician. The Swedish King Charles XI. appointed him his personal physician and raised him for his services in the fight against the plague, which broke out as a result of the Russian siege of Riga (1656) in the Second Northern War , on October 20, 1666 as Witte von Lilienau to the nobility.

In addition to medical writings, he wrote occasional writings and poems in German and Latin. His contemporaries boasted that he could speak many languages . Philipp von Zesen led Niklaß Weisse von Liljenau , nicknamed Der Selbliche, as a member of the German-minded cooperative .

From him an entry from 1652 in is album amicorum of Johann Christoph Kramer in the Württemberg Regional Library in Stuttgart received.

He was married to Gertrud, geb. von Höveln , the daughter of his predecessor Johann von Höveln . The last years of his life were overshadowed by strokes of fate: his wife died in 1678, his son Johannes as a student in 1679 and his daughters Catharina Christina in 1680 and Gertruta Wilhelmine in 1685.

His cousin Henning Witte wrote his funeral note.

Works

  • Hydrops ascites. Suffering 1645
  • Meditationes De Cavsis Arthritidis. Franeker: Balck 1647
Digitalisat , City Library Lübeck
  • De pestilentia. Suffering 1648
  • Teaching about the plague that raged in Riga and Livonia in 1657. Riga 1657

literature

  • Johann Friedrich von Recke, Karl Eduard Napiersky: General writers and scholars lexicon of the provinces of Livonia, Esthland and Courland. Volume 4, Mitau: Steffenhagen 1823, p. 550
  • Arvo Tering: Riga Municipal Physician Nicolaus Witte von Lilienau (1618–1688): His Medical Views at the Crossroads of Tradition and Changes in Medical Teaching during his Student Years at Dutch Universities in the 1640s. in: Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum ISSN  2228-2017 2 (1014), pp. 70–116 ( digitized version )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Heinrich Julius Böthführ: The Livlanders at universities outside Germany in past centuries. First series: Prague, Cologne, Erfurt, Rostock, Heidelberg, Wittenberg, Marburg, Leyden, Erlangen. Riga: Häcker 1884, p. 97
  2. ↑ Entry in the Rostock matriculation portal
  3. ↑ Tering (lit.)
  4. ↑ Witte's views on physiology were pioneering in all of his disputations , Tering (Lit.)
  5. ^ Philipp von Zesen : German-Latin leaders. Corporate documents. (= Editions of German literature from the 15th to 18th centuries 114), Berlin: de Gruyter 2013 ISBN 978-3-11-086114-3 , p. 423
  6. ↑ Ingeborg Krekler: The autograph collection of the Stuttgart Konistorialdirektors Friedrich Wilhelm Frommann. Wiesbaden 1992, p. 779
  7. ↑ Henning Witte : Lessum funebrem, cum vir quondam nobilissimus etc. Dominus Nicol. Witte a Lilienau, Med. Dr. celeberrimus, sacrae Regiae Maiest. Sueciae per plurimos annos archiater, inque patria physicus primarius ac longe meritissimus, mortalitatem exueret, et ad vitam transiret meliorem, moerens lugensque patrueli desideratissimo facere conabatur M. Henningus Witte eloq. Et histor. PP. Riga: Nöller 1688
personal data
SURNAME Witte, Nicolaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Witte von Lilienau, Nicolaus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Baltic physician and first city physician in Riga
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1618
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga
DATE OF DEATH January 5, 1688
Place of death Riga