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Paul Marquard Schlegel

Paul Marquard Schlegel Latinized as Paulus Marquartus Slegelius (23 August 1605 – 20 February 1653) was a German physician and anatomist known for his public demonstrations in anatomy and for being an early proponent of blood circulation. The plant genus Schlegelia was named in his honour.

Life and work

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Schlegel was born in Hamburg where his father Martin Schlegel (died 1609) was a wealthy merchant who wished his son would study law. By the age of ten, he lost both parents. He was influenced by the teachings of Rector Paul Sperling (1560–1630), Georg Fabricius (1590–1631) and Johann Starcke at the Johanneum. Schlegel joined the University of Rostock to study law but found it uninteresting and quit to study the natural sciences, first at Altdorf (1626, where his teachers included Georg Nößler, Ludwig Jungermann and Caspar Hofmann) and then at Wittenberg where he became a friend of Werner Rolfinck. In 1629 Rolfinck became a professor of anatomy and botany at Jena and Schlegel also moved there. From 1631, he began to visit medical centres, training and travelling through Europe. He first went to the University of Leiden followed by a visit to England. in France and Italy starting from 1631, and received a doctoral degree from Padua in 1636 before returning to Germany. He became a professor of medicine and botany at Jena in 1638. Here he worked with Rolfinck to establish a (medicinal) botanical garden. The Duke of Weimar made him his personal physician and in 1642 he moved to Hamburg as subphysicus (deputy of the city physicus or stadtphysicus). He developed a circle of distinguished medical practitioners and began lectures on anatomy at the anatomical theatre which included dissections of human cadavers, despite religious objections to these practices. He promoted his correspondent William Harvey's views on blood circulation on which he wrote De Sanguinis Motu Commentatio (1650).[1][2][3] He made use of cadavers particularly of people killed by capital punishment or who had died from other causes. It is often claimed that on 31 January 1653, he went to examine the frozen corpse of hanged man and the body accidentally fell on him causing injuries from which he died on 20th February. This has been noted as being untrue and that he died from a fever. His books and letters are now in the Hamburg City Library.[4]

Schlegel married Elisabeth Hüpken, daughter of Swedish merchant, in 1643 and they had four sons and two daughters, although none survived to old age.

Writings

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Schelegel's writings include:

References

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  1. ^ Sieveking, Edward H. (1878). "Harvey and his Contemporaries". British Medical Journal. 1 (888): 35–36. ISSN 0007-1447. PMC 2221216.
  2. ^ Bertoloni Meli, Domenico (2013). "Early Modern Experimentation on Live Animals". Journal of the History of Biology. 46 (2): 199–226. doi:10.1007/s10739-012-9327-7. ISSN 0022-5010. PMID 22684270. S2CID 254542675.
  3. ^ Harvey, William (1963). The circulation of the blood. J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd. pp. 190–191.
  4. ^ Beneke, Otto (1890). "Schlegel, Paul Marquard". Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German). Vol. 31. pp. 391–392.
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