Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 871

HIERONYMUS DAVID GAUBIUS (1705-1780) Sermo academicus de regimine mentis quod medicorum est. Apud Cornelium de Pecker 1767 2nd ed. [2] 115 pp. 24.4 cm.

Gaubius, a native of Heidelberg, succeeded his friend and teacher, Hermann Boerhaave (see No. 739 ff.), in the professorship of medicine at Leiden. He was an effective and successful teacher and his influence was widespread throughout Europe and America. Although he was deeply committed to chemistry, Gaubius did not allow that commitment to overshadow his interest in clinical medicine. In his most popular and well-known work, Institutiones pathologiae medicinalis (1758), he presented a modified humoral theory which ignored the body of pathological knowledge that had been accumulated during the previous century. This was unfortunate because his book went through many editions and translations and was used by countless students who had no knowledge of the work of Morgagni or Matthew Baillie. Gaubius did some of his best work in medicinal chemistry and many consider his treatise on prescriptions to be his finest work. The present work is the first of two lectures given by Gaubius in 1747 and 1763, respectively, on the management and cure of mental diseases. During Gaubius' time a large proportion of the psychiatric cases showed no specific pathology. As a result, there was no reservoir of knowledge to draw upon and purely theoretical considerations were often introduced into the practice of psychiatry. In these lectures, Gaubius presents an approach to mental diseases in which he argues against the Leibnitzian theory of the supremacy of mind over matter and supports a more objective approach to the description of psychiatric conditions.

See Related Record(s): 872 739

Cited references: Waller 3432 (1747 ed.); Wellcome III, p. 95 (1747 ed.)