Caspar Wistar (physician)

Caspar Wistar (* September 13, 1761 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, † January 22, 1818 ) was an American physician and anatomist.

Caspar Wistar was born as the son of Thomas and Mary Waln Wistar Wistar. He was the grandson of Caspar Wistar sen. (1696-1752), a German immigrant and Quakers. In 1788 he married Isabella Marshall, but died two years later. In 1798 he married Elizabeth Mifflin.

Wistar studied medicine at Edinburgh, where he took his degree in 1786 and taught from after his return to the United States at the Medical Faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. Here he developed anatomical models and dealt with the preservation of human organs by means of wax injections. He was a proponent of vaccination. In the treatment of yellow fever patients during the epidemic in 1793, he became infected themselves from this disease. In professional circles Wistar became known as author of medical textbooks as the two-volume A System of Anatomy ( 1811-1814 ).

In 1787 he became a member of the American Philosophical Society and by this Society 1815-1818 as President before. He assumed the office of Thomas Jefferson.

The botanist Thomas Nuttall named in honor of the Wistar genus Wisteria, to the known as Wisteria ornamental plant belongs. Although the spelling Wisteria (instead of Wistaria ) was an etymological error, but it is according to the rules of botanical nomenclature ( International Code of Botanical Nomenclature ) maintain.

Swell

• The Wistar - Wister Family