Name Christian Paullini | Died 1712, Eisenach, Germany | |
 | ||
Christian Franz Paullini (25 February 1643 – 10 June 1712) was a German physician and theologian.
Contents
Biography
He was born in Eisenach in a family of merchants and scholars: his parents wanted him to become a priest and his initial education was designed with this in mind. But he was attracted to medical art and studied both theology and medicine.
He attended middle school and secondary school in Thuringia and he graduated from Coburg.
He studied theology and medicine in Gdańsk, Königsberg, Rostock, Lübeck, Kiel and Copenhagen, was Magister Artium in Wittenberg and received his MD in Leiden. Meanwhile he accomplished study stays and courses in Cambridge, Oxford, Sweden, Norway et Island. He was the Munster Bishop physician and later the Duke of Brunswick physician in Wolfenbüttel.
He came back in Eisenach on 1685 and 1689 where he assumed the position of "Ducal Stadtphysicus" i.e. city doctor.
He was regarded as a polymath and he corresponded with Leibniz and knew the German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. He was a member of numerous learned societies such as Fruitbearing Society, Pegnesischer Blumenorden and German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
In his long life of approximately 70 years, he wrote 68 books of which several editions were printed.
He died in 1712 in his home town.
Works
He made extensive reference and resorted to both ancient and contemporary medical authorities and to folk medicine (sailors, farmers, common people). His works reflected a deep learning based on the four temperaments theory and the outcome of a lengthy process of compiling the data obtained from his observation.
Amongst his essential works, there was a textbook on how to use human and animal excrement to cure internal or external diseases (Heilsame Dreck-Apotheke: wie nemlich mit Koth und Urin die meisten Krankheiten und Schäden glucklich geheilet worden), such as fecal bacteriotherapy.
He wrote a treatise (Flagellum salutis) on the advantage of the whip for curative purpose in various disorders and a handbook on the toad's therapeutic properties (Bufo juxta methodum et leges illustris Academiae Naturae curiosorum breviter descriptus).
As a botanist, he gave his name to Paullinia cupana known as guarana, a climbing plant native to the Amazon basin and especially common in Brazil. As a zoologist, he described the kraken in 1706 after Francesco Negri in Animalia fabulosa.
It should be noted his commitment to promoting religious freedom far ahead of his time.
In the same way, Christian Franz Paullini bolstered support for women's education by publishing his works in favor of learned German ladies in 1705 and in 1712. In his book he listed alphabetically all the learned German women known to him.
His poor reputation came 130 years after his death from false historiographies: Rerum et antiquitatum Germanicarum Syntagma, Chronicon Mindense, Chronicon Hüxariense, Carmen de Brunsburgo and Annales Corbeienses.