The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania
- Pages
- about 157
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2.9 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker was one of three generations of
distinguished professors of medicine. His father, August Friedrich
Hecker, a most industrious writer, first practised as a physician in
Frankenhausen, and in 1790 was appointed Professor of Medicine at the
University of Erfurt. In 1805 he was called to the like professorship at
the University of Berlin. He died at Berlin in 1811.
Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker was born at Erfurt in January, 1795. He
went, of course--being then ten years old--with his father to Berlin in
1805, studied at Berlin in the Gymnasium and University, but interrupted
his studies at the age of eighteen to fight as a volunteer in the war for
a renunciation of Napoleon and all his works. After Waterloo he went
back to his studies, took his doctor's degree in 1817 with a treatise on
the "Antiquities of Hydrocephalus," and became privat-docent in the
Medical Faculty of the Berlin University. His inclination was strong
from the first towards the historical side of inquiries into Medicine.
This caused him to undertake a "History of Medicine," of which the first
volume appeared in 1822. It obtained rank for him at Berlin as
Extraordinary Professor of the History of Medicine. This office was
changed into an Ordinary professorship of the same study in 1834, and
Hecker held that office until his death in 1850.
The office was created for a man who had a special genius for this form
of study. It was delightful to himself, and he made it delightful to
others. He is regarded as the founder of historical pathology. He
studied disease in relation to the history of man, made his study yield
to men outside his own profession an important chapter in the history of
civilisation, and even took into account physical phenomena upon the
surface of the globe as often affecting the movement and character of
epidemics.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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