Johannes Heurnius

Life

Heurnius was born in Utrecht, and studied at Leuven and Paris. He went to the University of Padua to study under Hieronymus Fabricius; and graduated M.D. there in 1566, examined by Petrus Ramus and Fabricius.

He wrote on the Great Comet of 1577; at that time he was town physician in Utrecht. In 1581 he became professor of medicine at the University of Leiden. Heurnius already had a reputation and good contacts with humanist scholars, and was appointed as senior to Gerardus Bontius, an earlier physician on the faculty.

He was a pioneer of the bedside teaching of medicine, and has been given credit for his methods. From Padua he brought not only anatomy in the tradition of Vesalius, but anatomical demonstrations and practical clinical work. Heurnius's ideas on teaching were transmitted widely through Otto, Franciscus Sylvius, Govert Bidloo and Herman Boerhaave. After his father's death, Otto put together his lectures, published in the Opera Omnia, covering medicine both in theory and as a practical discipline. He died in Leiden, Netherlands.

His son, Justus Van Heurn, Van Heurne, or Heurnius (1587 – c. 1653) was a doctor, missionary, translator, and a botanist. He helped prepare one of the earliest translations of the Bible into Malay and was the first European to collect, document, and record many of the South African Cape plants.

References

References

1. George Newman, ''Interpreters of Nature'' (1968), pp. 79–80;[https://books.google.com/books?id=xPdkHVIdqTIC&pg=PA80 Google Books].
2. [http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=125124 Mathematics Genealogy page]. Genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu. Retrieved on 2012-04-16.
3. Tabitta van Nouhuys, ''The Age of Two-Faced Janus: the comets of 1577 and 1618 and the decline of the Aristotelian world view in the Netherlands'' (1998), pp. 189–200; [https://books.google.com/books?id=xO3n6sjUaK4C&pg=PA189 Google Books].
4. Kathryn Murphy and Richard Todd, ''"A man very well studyed": new contexts for Thomas Browne'' (2008), pp. 54–5; [https://books.google.com/books?id=DnpqhiPB-2IC&pg=PA55 Google Books].
5. [https://archive.org/stream/growthofmedicine00buckuoft#page/428/mode/2up The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800]. Archive.org. Retrieved on 2012-04-16.
6. Heurnius, Otto. 430–2
7. (1981). "Botanical Exploration Southern Africa, Introductory volume to the Flora of Southern Africa". CRC Press.