Prospero Alpini

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Prospero Alpini (1586), portrait by Leandro Bassano
Prospero Alpini (1616), portrait by Leandro Bassano

Prospero Alpini , also Prosper Alpinus or Prosper Alpini / Alpino (born November 23, 1553 in Marostica ( Republic of Venice ); † June 16 or November 23, 1616 or "more likely" February 5 or 6, 1617 in Padua ) was an Italian Doctor and botanist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Alpino ".

Live and act

Prospero Alpino is the son of the doctor Francesco Alpino . After serving in the Milanese army, he began his medical studies at the University of Padua in 1574, where he was known as an outstanding student under Melchior Wieland , who also worked in Padua as Second Director of the Botanical Garden, and was often elected to university committees. On August 28, 1578, he received his doctorate in medicine .

His preferred scientific disciplines were botany, medicine and pharmacology , and he also dealt with natural history and zoology .

He then practiced in Camposampiero , a small town in the province of Padua, but his fondness for botany, especially exotic plants, led him to Egypt in 1580 , where he became personal physician to the Venetian consul in Cairo , Giorgio Emo.

He spent three years in Egypt, where he studied the Egyptian flora intensively. From observing date palms , he concluded that plants are of two sexes. He said that the female date palms will not bear fruit unless their branches come in contact with the branches of the male date palms; or more generally when the female plants have not been pollinated or touched by the pollen from the male plants.

On his return to Italy , he lived in Genoa and was the doctor of Giovanni Andrea Doria , Prince of Melfi , a municipality in the Italian province of Potenza . During this time he also ran his own practice. In 1590 he returned to Venice, where he published his work De Plantis Aegypti Liber (a book on Egyptian flora) in 1592 and was elected lettore dei semplici at the University of Padua in 1593 .

In 1593, a year after Galileo Galileo's appointment as professor of mathematics , he became the first professor of botany at the University of Padua. There he cultivated various species of oriental plants, which he had described in De Plantis gypti liber . In 1603 Prospero Alpini succeeded Melchiore Guilandino as director of the botanical garden in Padua. He held this office until 1616. Despite his teaching activities, he continued to work as a practicing doctor.

24 years later he died in Padua and found his grave in the Basilica of St. Anthony . His son, Alpino Alpini (died 1637), was also a professor of botany in Padua.

Sponsor

Alpino was mainly promoted by George Emo and Andrea Doria during their collaboration . Antonio Morosini , a family friend to whom Alpini De medicina aegyptiorum dedicated him, recommended him Emo. During the period in which he was pursuing his vocation in Padua, he dedicated his De balsamo dialogus to the Riformatori (actual trustees) of the university. He published it again in 1592 with the same dedication. In 1594 he was called; In 1601, the year of his revival, he also dedicated De praesagienda vita to the Riformatori.

Works

Alpini's works were well known during his lifetime. Alpini maintained correspondence with other natural scientists inside and outside Italy.

  • Alpini's best-known work, De plantis Aegypti (1592; urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-2321 ), is a groundbreaking study of Egyptian flora, which introduced many exotic plants (for example the coffee plant) into the European botanical circles . It contains 73 large woodcuts of exotic plants.
  • As early as 1591 in Venice he published De balsamo dialogus ( urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-2363 ) about a special plant. As a doctor, he was primarily interested in the pharmacological properties of plants.
  • De rerum aegyptarum , published long after Alpini's death, was a groundbreaking contribution to Egyptology . The main subject was Egyptian natural history.
  • De medicina Aegyptiorum (1591) was one of the first studies of non-European medicine. It is the first European work in which the coffee bush, the banana and the baobab are not only mentioned but also illustrated. Alpini's excellent monograph on Egyptian medicine (1591) is probably the earliest of its kind. It states that hashish makes people fall into ecstasy. Prospero Alpini compares the early stages of hashish intoxication with those of alcohol , but he emphasizes that the visions that havehish smokers experience are significantly limited by their intelligence and psychological state at the time the drug was consumed .
  • De Rhapontico . Padua (1612, urn : nbn: de: gbv: 48-1-1460236 )
  • De plantis exoticis libri duo (1627, doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.120036 ): Alpini carefully studied the Cretan flora together with Onorio Belli . Information about plants from other regions was later incorporated into the manuscript, which was edited by Alpino's son and completed in 1614. Data on many of these plants were obtained from seed samples that Alpini had received and cultivated. All 145 plants were illustrated by copperplate engravings. Many of the plants were described for the first time. Alpini's accuracy in describing the plants was demonstrated by A. Baldacci and PA Saccardo, who were able to identify 71 of the 85 Cretan plants.
  • Alpini's studies of Egyptian diseases culminated in his widely acclaimed De praesagienda vita et morte aegrotantium (1601), which contains numerous prognostic symptoms that should enable doctors to predict the life expectancy of their patients.

Honor taxon

Charles Plumier named the genus Alpina from the plant family of the ginger plants (Zingiberaceae) in his honor and his father Francesco Alpino . Carl von Linné later changed the spelling to Alpinia .

literature

  • Giuseppe Lusina:  Alpino, Prospero. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 2:  Albicante – Ammannati. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1960.
  • Giuseppe Ongaro: Contributi alla biografia di Prospero Alpino , Acta Medicae Historia Patavina , Padova (1961–1963), 79–168.
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica : Prospero Alpini (died November 23, 1616 or February 6, 1617).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica: Prospero Alpini .
  2. ↑ Alpinus (Prosper) . In: Required Supplements to the Great Complete Universal Lexicon of All Sciences and Arts […] . First volume, A – An. Leipzig 1751, column 1154.
  3. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica .
  4. ↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart , Christoph Gradmann (ed.): Doctors' Lexicon. From antiquity to the present . 3. Edition. Springer, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-540-29584-4 , pp. 8 .
  5. ↑ Antoinette Schnyder von Waldkirch: How Europe discovered coffee. Travel reports from the Baroque period as a source of the history of coffee. Zurich 1988, p. 148 ff.
  6. ↑ Michael Stolberg : The history of palliative medicine. Medical care for the dying from 1500 until today. Mabuse-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-940529-79-4 , p. 66.
  7. ^ Charles Plumier: Nova Plantarum Americanarum Genera . Leiden 1703, p. 26
  8. ^ Carl von Linné: Critica Botanica . Leiden 1737, p. 91
  9. ↑ Carl von Linné: Genera Plantarum . Leiden 1742, p. 3
  10. ↑ Wolfgang U. Eckart : Prospero Alpini , in: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann : Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the 20th century . 1st edition. CH Beck Munich 1995, p. 18 a , ISBN 3-406-37485-9 .
personal data
SURNAME Alpini, Prospero
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alpini, Prosper; Alpino, Prosper; Alpinus, Prosper; Alpino (botanical author abbreviation)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian doctor and botanist
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1553
PLACE OF BIRTH Marostica
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: June 16, 1616 or November 23, 1616 or February 5, 1617 or February 6, 1617
Place of death Padua