Kilian Stobæus (6 February 1690 – 17 February 1742) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

physician, natural scientist, and historian. He offered a young

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...

tutoring and lodging, as well as the use of his library, which included many books about botany. He also gave the student free admission to his lectures. Blunt (2004), pp. 21–22. Stover (1974), p. 15. In his spare time, Linnaeus explored the flora of

Scania Scania, also known by its native name of Skåne (, ), is the southernmost of the historical provinces (''landskap'') of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conterminous with Skån ...

together with students sharing the same interests. Stover (1974), pp. 14–15.

Life

Stobæus was born 6 February 1690 in

Vinslöv Vinslöv () is a locality situated in Hässleholm Municipality, Scania County, Sweden with 3,984 inhabitants in 2010. Vinslöv Church is a medieval church which contains some of the earliest church murals in Sweden Church murals or church wa ...

, Sweden. He was the son of Nils Stobæus and nephew of professor . Although he was born in the province of Scania, Stobæus grew up with an uncle in Gothenburg. In 1725 he married Florentina Schubert, the daughter of a hat maker in

Lund Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish province of Scania, across the Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipality, Scania County. The Öre ...

. Stobæus died 17 February 1742 in Lund.

Medical career

In 1709 he became a student at Lund University, where he was promoted to doctor of medicine in 1721.

Johan Jacob Döbelius Johan Jacob Döbelius (29 March 1674, Rostock, Germany – 14 January 1743, Lund, Sweden), was a professor of medicine. Life After studies in Leiden, Döbelius became a Doctor of Medicine. He ended up in Gothenburg, where he practiced med ...

was his mentor there. In December of the same year he was appointed to lead Döbelius' professorship, which he did until the end of 1723. In 1724 he became

city physician City physician (German: ; , , from Latin ) was a historical title in the Late Middle Ages for a physician appointed by the city council. The city physician was responsible for the health of the population, particularly the poor, and the sanitary ...

in Gothenburg, but the following year he returned to Lund at the request of the Scanian nobility and the magistrate in Malmö and on the guarantee of an annual fee. As a doctor he provided free medication to the ill and poor.

Academic work

In 1728 Stobæus became an additional full professor of (natural history and physics), a post he replaced in 1732 with the full professorship of history. He was also given the title of

archiater An archiater ( grc, ἀρχίατρος) was a chief physician of a monarch, who typically retained several. At the Roman imperial court, their chief held the high rank and specific title of '' Comes archiatrorum''. The term has also been used of c ...

the same year, and he continued to practice medicine extensively during his time as professor of history, including as doctor at the Ramlösa mineral spa, and tutoring young physicians. As a teacher, writer and collector, Stobæus was very prominent, and with the exception of , none of his contemporary university professors enjoyed the same public esteem and undivided reverence. He was not only, from the scientific point of view of his time, an excellent physician and scientist, but also distinguished himself personally by his rectitude and seriousness. Stobæus knew very well how to arouse in his disciples a desire for scientific work by approaching them personally and showing them the paths of study and research. In his private residence in Lund, he provided free accommodation for a large number of promising students, including the young

, who was granted free access to Stobæus' impressive private library. Among Stobæus' other students and disciples were

Nils Rosén von Rosenstein Nils Rosén von Rosenstein (11 February 1706 – 16 July 1773) was a Swedish physician. He is considered the founder of modern pediatrics, while his work ''The diseases of children, and their remedies'' is considered to be "the first modern textb ...

, and Sven Lagerbring.

Research

In the natural sciences, Stobæus was particularly interested in the study of

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

. In the field of history, his activities were significant, especially in the broader direction he introduced in his teaching, in that he not only addressed ancient and general history, as his predecessors had done, but also lectured on Swedish history and gave instruction in source research, on ancient monuments, and in

numismatics Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals and related objects. Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also inc ...

. In 1735 he donated his considerable collections of natural objects and archaeological objects to Lund University, thereby laying the foundations not only for its natural history museum (which for a long time bore the name ''Museum Stobaænum'', and which developed into the ), but also for its archaeological collections (now the ). In 1745 his wife donated his numismatic collection to Lund University.

Authorship

Stobæus published a large number of scientific publications, partly in the form of dissertations, partly in the series . The most important of these were collected and reprinted in 1752–1753 in Danzig under the title . In addition, several unprinted writings by Stobæus are kept in the

Lund University Library Lund University Libraries is a network of public research libraries in Lund, Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom o ...

Student nation activity

As a student, Stobæus had belonged to the

student nation Student nations or simply nations ( la, natio meaning "being born") are regional corporations of students at a university. Once widespread across Europe in medieval times, they are now largely restricted to the oldest universities of Sweden and Fin ...

and was also its ' in 1717. As a professor, however, he spent the last years of his life (1739–1742) as ''

inspektor Inspektor or inspehtori, Swedish and Finnish for inspector, is the largely honorary chairman of student nations in Lund and Uppsala universities in Sweden and University of Helsinki in Finland. The inspektor has a supervisory role in their nat ...

'' of the . In 1906, a bust of Stobæus (sculpted by Walter Runeberg) was erected on the university square in Lund. This now forms, every year on the first of May, the meeting point for a student society, the ''Kilian & C:o Orden''. One of the sons of Stobæus' cousin, by the same name – (1717–1792) – also became a professor in Lund in obstetrics.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stobaeus, Kilian 1690 births 1742 deaths Academic staff of Lund University People from Hässleholm Municipality 18th-century Swedish physicians