Franz Leopold Lafontaine
Franz Anton Leopold Lafontaine ( born January 14, 1756 in Biberach an der Riss, † December 12, 1812 in Mogilev ) was a German military doctor in Polish and Austrian service. He was the maternal grandfather of Princess Julia of Battenberg.
Franz Leopold was the son of art dealer Leopold Benno Ignaz Lafontaine and Marie Katharina Franziska nee Leonhardt, and received his first training from the Benedictine monks in Biberach, later he worked for four years as an intern in a pharmacy. Since 1774, he studied medicine at the University of Strasbourg, where he became a Master of Surgery in 1777. After that he went to Vienna, where he received practical training in the hospital of Stoll to 1778. in 1780 he appeared as a surgeon in the Austrian army and served there until 1782, in the Crimea and in Galicia.
During these years, his regiment came to Tarnów, which belonged to Austria at that time. After his departure from the army Lafontaine practiced in this city, then click on the Galician goods to the Princess Lubomirski and finally in Krakow, where he opened a private medical practice. In 1787 he went to Warsaw, where he received the post of court physician of King Stanisław August Poniatowski. He soon became a highly esteemed in court circles the doctor came to great prestige and a considerable fortune. In 1803 he bought the manor Falęcin at Czersk. In 1791, he received the doctoral degree without examination in medicine and surgery at the University of Halle.
In 1789 he married Theresa de Cornelly (* in 1768, † in 1827), a maid of honor of King Stanislaus Augustus, of Hungarian origin, which was later raised by genealogists of the family Battenberg - Mountbatten to Baroness ( as simple bourgeois Lafontaine, from which one " de la Fontaine " made ). The couple Lafontaine led a so-called open house where many celebrities of the era (such as, among others, Tadeusz Kościuszko, General Jan Henryk Dabrowski and Prince Józef Poniatowski ) wrong. Doctor Lafontaine also had a large art gallery.
After the creation of the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 Lafontaine was made a chief surgeon of the army of the Duchy with the task of organizing the military health service. He created a school for medical assistant and military doctors and statette their library with books from his own collection of. In 1811 he was appointed to the supreme physician of the army of the Duchy. As such, he took in 1812 to Napoleon's invasion of Russia in part, was captured by the Russians and died in Mogilev as a prisoner of war.
Francis Lafontaine left seven scientific publications ( three of them are now lost), was a pioneer of smallpox - vaccination in Poland, organized military hospitals in the country according to new principles, was also interested in animal science and wrote a treatise on the foot-and-mouth disease, also dealt with the cowpox. He became very famous after a successful cataract operation on a woman who had been blind since childhood.
His knowledge of the Polish language remained poor until the end - he wrote his articles and letters in German, Latin or French - but was also active as a playwright, his play " conscription " was performed in 1809 in Polish translation in Warsaw.
Lafontaine was also an active Freemason, member of the lodge " to überwundnen advantage " in Cracow (founded in 1786) and belonged since he moved to Warsaw at the local lodge " goddess of Eleusis " (est. 1780).
The couple Lafontaine had two daughters, Sophie ( † in 1831), who married the General Hans Moritz Hauke , and Victoria († in 1835), wife of the rich Warsaw pastry chef Karl Joseph Lessel.
Awards and honors
- Virtuti Militari, (1809 );
- Legion of Honour ( 1811);
- Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Göttingen since 1802;
- Member of the Warsaw Scientific Society since 1804;
- Member of the Medical Academy in Paris since 1806;
- Member of the Medical Society to Vilnius since 1809;
- Honorary Professor of the University in Krakow since 1811