Joseph Jakob Ritter Plenk or Plenck (28 November 1738 – 24 August 1807) was a physician and polymath in the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...

. He is now known as a pioneer

dermatologist Dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with the skin.''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.'' Random House, Inc. 2001. Page 537. . It is a speciality with both medical and surgical aspects. A dermatologist is a specialist medi ...

Life

Plenck was born on 28 November 1738 in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, although some sources give a birth year of 1732. He graduated at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...

in 1763, and was a follower of Heinrich Johann Nepomuk von Crantz. An academic at the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis''; German: ''Universität Basel'') is a public research university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest univ ...

in 1770, he then taught at Tymau,

Buda Buda (, ) is the part of Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, that lies on the western bank of the Danube. Historically, “Buda” referred only to the royal walled city on Castle Hill (), which was constructed by Béla IV between 1247 and ...

and

Pesth Pest () is the part of Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, that lies on the eastern bank of the Danube. Pest was administratively unified with Buda and Óbuda in 1873; prior to this, it was an independent city. In colloquial Hungarian, "Pes ...

. In 1783 he moved to the Josephinum in Vienna. He died on 24 August 1807. In 1861, botanist

Siegfried Reisseck Siegfried Reissek (11 April 1819 in Teschen – 9 November 1871 in Vienna) was an Austrian naturalist and botanist who specialized in spermatophytes. He is known for his studies involving plant anatomy and histology. From 1837 to 1841 he was ...

published ''

Plenckia ''Plenckia'' is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Celastraceae. It is native to Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and north-western Argentina. The genus name of ''Plenckia'' is in honour of Joseph Jakob Plenck (1735–1807), an Austri ...

'', a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s from South America, belonging to the family

Celastraceae The Celastraceae (staff-vine or bittersweet) are a family of 98 genera and 1,350 species of herbs, vines, shrubs and small trees, belonging to the order Celastrales. The great majority of the genera are tropical, with only ''Celastrus'' (the staf ...

and named in honour of Joseph Jakob Plenck.

Works

Plenck was a prolific writer, on subjects including

surgery Surgery is a medical specialty that uses manual and instrumental techniques to diagnose or treat pathological conditions (e.g., trauma, disease, injury, malignancy), to alter bodily functions (e.g., malabsorption created by bariatric surgery s ...

. In 1776 he published a classification of skin diseases, ''Doctrina de morbis cutaneis''. It introduced a consistent system, dividing dermatosis into 14 classes.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Plenk, Joseph Jakob 1738 births 1807 deaths Dermatologists 18th-century physicians from the Holy Roman Empire