Nicolaes Tulp
Nicolaes Tulp | |
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University of Leiden , Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons |
Nicolaes Tulp (9 October 1593 – 12 September 1674) was a Dutch surgeon and mayor of Amsterdam. Tulp was well known for his upstanding moral character[1] and as the subject of Rembrandt's famous painting The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.
Life
Born Claes Pieterszoon, he was the son of a prosperous merchant active in civic affairs in Amsterdam. From 1611 to 1614 he studied medicine in Leiden. When he returned to Amsterdam he became a respected doctor and in 1617 he married Aagfe van der Voegh. An ambitious young man, he adopted the tulip as his heraldric emblem and changed his name to Nicolaes (a more proper version of the name Claes) Tulp. He began working in local politics as city treasurer, and in 1622, became a magistrate in Amsterdam.
Career as a physician
The career of Tulp matched the success of Amsterdam. As the population of Amsterdam grew from 30,000 in 1580 to 210,000 in 1650, Tulp's career as a doctor and politician made him a man of influence. He drove a small carriage to visit all the patients. Thanks to his connections on the city council, in 1628 Tulp was appointed Praelector Anatomiae at the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons. His wife died in the same year, leaving him with five young children. In 1630 he married his second wife, the daughter of the mayor of Outshoorn. They had three children.
It was Tulp who examined and signed the fitness reports for the first Dutch settlers on the island of Manhattan, and his signature was found on these in the long-lost archives of the Dutch settlement uncovered in the 1980s in the basement of the New York public library.[2]
In his job, Tulp was responsible for inspections of apothecary shops. Chemists in Amsterdam had access to an enormous amount of herbs and spices from the East, thanks to the new shipping routes. It became a successful trade and in 1636 there were 66 apothecaries in Amsterdam. Shocked at the exorbitant prices asked for useless anti-plague medicines (Amsterdam was severely hit by the plague in 1635), Tulp decided to do something about it. He gathered his doctor and chemist friends together and they wrote the first pharmacopoeia of Amsterdam in 1636 the Pharmacopoea Amstelredamensis. The Apothecary guild would require an exam based on Tulp's book for new chemists to set up shop in Amsterdam. This pharmacopoeia became a standard work and set an example for all the other cities of Holland.
Rembrandt's painting
The praelector would give yearly
As befits a new praelector, the Guild commissioned a new group portrait of the prominent councilmen and guild masters.
Rembrandt's event depicted in the painting can be dated to 16 January 1632; the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, of which Tulp was official City Anatomist, permitted only one public dissection a year and the body would have to be that of an executed criminal. The criminal is identified as the robber Aris Kindt. Rembrandt would later make a painting of Tulp's successor in 1656 The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Jan Deijman. Since the painting of Tulp's predecessor in 1619, The Osteology Lesson of Dr. Sebastiaen Egbertsz was a group portrait around a skeleton, it is clear that the subject of a dead body had set a precedent. It would be another 100 years before the surgeons were allowed to dissect a female cadaver.
"The Book of Monsters"
His most impressive work on medicine was his
Tulp minutely described the condition we know as migraine, the devastating effects of tobacco smoking on the lungs, and reveals an understanding of human psychology in a description of the placebo effect. Tulp also discovered the ileocecal valve at the junction of the large and small intestines, still known as Tulp's valve.
While Tulp made observations of various diseases, treatment often continued in the age-old way. His description of the symptoms of
Public office
Partially as a result of the success of his books, Tulp became Mayor of Amsterdam in 1654, a position he held for four terms. His son Dirck married Anna Burgh, the daughter of Albert Burgh, another Mayor of Amsterdam who had, like Tulp, studied medicine in Leiden in 1614. In 1655 Tulp's daughter Margaretha married Jan Six, whom he helped become a magistrate of family affairs in Amsterdam. Years later, Six would also become Mayor of Amsterdam. Tulp, impressed by his behaviour, invited Paulus Potter to come to Amsterdam, after a quarrel in the Hague.
In 1673 Tulp was admitted to the Governing Committee of the Republic in The Hague.
Legacy and death
Tulp is buried in the
References
- ^ Busken Huet – Het land van Rembrand
- ISBN 978-0-262-01338-3.
- ^ "Dood, Chirurgijnsboek". stadsarchief.amsterdam.nl. Archived from the original on 23 February 2013. Retrieved 3 February 2022.
- ^ "Tulpius N. Observationes medicae..." www.unesco.org. Archived from the original on 26 April 2008.
- Amstelredamensis Observationes Medicae, Nicolai Tulpii, Amsterdam Elzevier, 1641
- Geneeskundige Waarneemingen van Nikolaas Tulp, Oud Burgermeester der Stad Amsterdam. Naar den zelfden Druk uit het Latyn vertaalt. Hier is bygevoegt de Lykoratie van den zeer vermaarden Heer Ludovicus Wolzogen., By Jurriaan Wijshoff. 1740 (later exposed to be somewhat of a fraud, this book not only translated, but also embellished the Tulp Latin version with fantastic Amsterdam urban legend stories dating from after Tulp's death)
- Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus, by William Harvey