Gerard van Swieten
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Gerard van Swieten | |
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Nikolaus von Jacquin |
Gerard van Swieten (7 May 1700 – 18 June 1772) was a Dutch physician who from 1745 was the personal physician of the Holy Roman Empress
Youth and study
Gerard van Swieten was the one surviving child of a prominent Catholic family in Leiden. His parents, the notary Thomas van Swieten (1662–1712) and Elisabeth Loo (†1708), had their children baptized by Jesuit priests, and Van Swieten remained a Roman Catholic throughout his life.[1] His paternal family had been prominent Leiden citizens since the 15th century, carrying a coat of arms with three violins, which Van Swieten modified and adopted when he was made a Baron in 1753.[2] They potentially descended from the old but already extinct noble house of Van Swieten , from the castle Zwieten,[3] though there is no direct evidence for this.[4]
Van Swieten was a precocious student, finishing
A physician in Leiden
Following his promotion, Van Swieten started a medical practice in Leiden. He initially ran his pharmacy in parallel, but in 1727 he handed this over to a son of his guardian Arnold Frans Coops.[9] He saw many patients and soon, apparently with Boerhaave's permission, also started giving private lessons in pharmacy and materia medicae, drawing 60 British students for his first course alone. He never was officially licensed to do so, and in 1734 the university forbade him to continue.[10] Within a year or two, he could afford buying a stately house.[11] Though they had no close personal relationship, Van Swieten was a great admirer of Boerhaave. After his study, Van Swieten kept attending Boerhaave's classes, making extensive notes on each and purportedly missing only one lecture between 1725 and 1738.[12] Eventually, Van Swieten published these notes in five volumes between 1742 and 1771.[13] When Boerhaave died in 1738, Van Swieten was by many considered his natural heir and he did take over part of Boerhaave's practice. However, he was not and had not expected to be offered his chair, since Catholics were not accepted as faculty at Leiden University.
In the meantime, in September 1729 Van Swieten had married Maria L. E. T. ter Beeck van Coesfelt (c.1711–1784), the daughter of a notary in The Hague and the sister of a fellow student in Leiden. Though she did not feature prominently in Van Swieten's public life, contemporaries reported a very happy marriage. Between 1731 and 1746 they had six children, five in Leiden and one in Vienna. The first (1731) was named Elisabeth after his mother, the oldest son (1733) was named Godfried after her father, and the youngest child (1746) was named Maria Theresia after the Empress, who was also her godmother. Their son Godfried (later in Austria spelled Gottfried) became famous in his own right as Austrian ambassador and patron of the great classical composers.[14][15]
November 1742 saw the death of Joannes Baptista Bassand, personal physician of the Holy Roman Empress
Career in Austria
In his new position he implemented a transformation of the Austrian health service and medical university education. He was the proposer of the main sanitary reform in the Habsburg monarchy, "Generale Normativum in Re Sanitatis", implemented by Maria Theresa in 1770.[19] He founded a botanical garden, a chemical laboratory and introduced clinical instruction. Since 1745 he was also librarian for Maria Theresa in what was then the Imperial Library.[20]
Beside his medical activities, Gerard van Swieten was also active as a
Vampires
Especially important is his part in the fight against
Following the conclusion of the Austro-Turkish War in 1718, Northern Serbia and a part of Bosnia came under Habsburg control. Through the settlement of refugees granted Wehrbauer status in the new border regions, vampire stories spread to German-speaking areas for the first time.
In 1755 Gerard van Swieten was sent by
His report, Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster (or Discourse on the Existence of Ghosts), offered an entirely natural explanation for the belief in vampires. He dismissed the claims of unusual circumstances around graves with possible causes such as the processes of fermentation and lack of oxygen being reasons for preventing decomposition. Characteristic for his opinion is this quotation from the preface to his essay of 1768 "that all the fuss doesn't come from anything other than vain fear, superstitious credulity, dark and eventful imagination and simplicity and ignorance among these people." In response to the report, Maria Theresa issued a decree that banned all traditional defences that locals had been using, such as putting accused vampires to the stakes, beheading or burning them.
In 1758, he also examined and treated Magda Logomer, a woman condemned to death in Zagreb for witchcraft at the request of the Maria Theresa, leading to the verdict being cancelled by the queen, ending a phase of witch trials in Croatia.[21]
Honors
In May 1749 van Swieten was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[22] In 1751, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
A genus of mahogany was named after Gerard van Swieten, Swietenia, by Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin.
The Frank – van Swieten Lectures, an international course about strategic information management in hospitals, that is organised by
References
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 9
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 11
- ^ Castle Zwieten. A branch of the Oude Rijn] was known as Zwiet (English: sweet) since at least the 10th century, being a place with [fresh water|sweet water nearest the sea.[1]
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 10
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 15
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 17–18
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 19–29
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 31–36
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 45
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 51–52
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 46–47
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 49
- ^ Gerard van Swieten, Commentaria in Hermanni Boerhaave aphorismos de cognoscendis et curandis morbis, Vol 1–5, 1742–1771.
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 54–55
- ^ D.L. van Swieten, Descendants of Gerard van Swieten, De Nederlandse Leeuw, July 1919 (in Dutch)
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 61
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 62
- ^ Van der Korst, p. 63–68
- ^ Sechel, Teodora Daniela. "The Health Care Reforms, the Sanitary Network, and the Physicians (Physici)". The Emergence of the Medical Profession in Transylvania (1770–1848) (PDF). p. 99.
- ^ Mulder, Willem Johannes Maria (1907). Dietrich von Nieheim: zijne opvatting van het concilie en zijne Kroniek. E. van der Vecht. p. iv.
- ^ Balog, Zdenko (1 February 2017). "Magda Logomer Herucina". Cris XVIII.
- ^ "Library and Archive Catalog". Royal Society. Retrieved 24 October 2010.[permanent dead link]
- J. K. van der Korst, Een dokter van formaat: Gerard van Swieten, lijfarts van keizerin Maria Theresia, Bohn Stafleu van Loghum, 2003, ISBN 9789031341085(354 pages) (in Dutch)