Prof Christopher Girtanner

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

(1760–1800) was a short-lived but influential

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

author, physician and chemist. He was also Privy Councillor to the Duke of Saxe-Coburg.

Life

He was born in St. Gallen in Switzerland on 7 December 1760, the son of Hieronymus Girtanner, a banker and his wife, Barbara Felicitas. He studied variously at St. Gallen,

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

, Paris, Edinburgh and London. He received his doctorate (MD) from the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

in 1782. He spent some years in the United Kingdom, and apparently owned a "salt manufactory near Edinburgh" (presumably at Joppa) in 1789. In 1790, he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

. His proposers were

Daniel Rutherford Daniel Rutherford (3 November 1749 – 15 November 1819) was a Scottish physician, chemist and botanist who is known for the isolation of nitrogen in 1772. Life Rutherford was born on 3 November 1749, the son of Anne Mackay and Professor J ...

, Andrew Duncan and

John Playfair John Playfair FRSE, FRS (10 March 1748 – 20 July 1819) was a Church of Scotland minister, remembered as a scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his book ''Illu ...

. In 1796, he analysed the appearance of

syphilis Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms depend on the stage it presents: primary, secondary, latent syphilis, latent or tertiary. The prim ...

into Europe in the late-fifteenth century. The ongoing debate of his day was as to whether the disease appeared spontaneously in Europe or was brought by the discovery of the Americas. He died in

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

, in what is now part of modern-day

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

on 17 May 1800.

Family

In 1790 he married Catherina Maria Erdmann.

Publications

*''Historical Information and Political Remarks concerning the French Revolution'', 7 volumes (1792–94)The Monthly Review 1795 *''The Antiquity of Syphilis'' (1796) *''Observations on the Nature and Cure of Calculus, Sea Scurvy etc.'' (1797)

References

1760 births 1800 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Swiss non-fiction writers 18th-century Swiss physicians People from St. Gallen (city) {{Switzerland-writer-stub