Otto Heurnius (born Otto van Heurn; 8 September 1577 – 14 July 1652) was a Dutch

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

theologian Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of ...

and

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

Life

He studied at

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

. He subsequently succeeded his father

Johannes Heurnius Johannes Heurnius (born Jan van Heurne; 4 February 1543 – 11 August 1601) was a Dutch physician and natural philosopher. Life Heurnius was born in Utrecht, and studied at Leuven and Paris. He went to the University of Padua to study under Hier ...

as professor of medicine at Leiden University, and took over anatomy teaching from

Pieter Pauw Pieter Pauw (latin: Petrus Pavius), (2 August 1564 – 1 August 1617) was a Dutch botanist and anatomist. He was a student of Hieronymus Fabricius. He was the first Anatomy Professor at University of Leiden. Biography He was the son of Piete ...

from 1617. Alongside his practical anatomy teaching, he had the care of a very various collection of zoological and botanical specimens. The aims of the collection included reconstruction of the life of the

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

, as in the ''

Book of Exodus The Book of Exodus (from ; ''Šəmōṯ'', 'Names'; ) is the second book of the Bible. It is the first part of the narrative of the Exodus, the origin myth of the Israelites, in which they leave slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of ...

''. He was also a

historian of philosophy The history of philosophy is the systematic study of the development of Philosophy, philosophical thought. It focuses on philosophy as rational inquiry based on argumentation, but some theorists also include myth, Religion, religious traditions ...

, stressing the period before the philosophers of the

Ancient Greeks Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically re ...

("barbarian philosophy"). He based his ideas on the ''

Corpus Hermeticum The is a collection of 17 Greek writings whose authorship is traditionally attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. The treatises were orig ...

''.

References

External links

*
WorldCat pagemartherus.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heurnius, Otto 1577 births 1652 deaths 17th-century Dutch physicians 17th-century Dutch anatomists 17th-century Dutch philosophers Leiden University alumni Academic staff of Leiden University