Justus Christian Loder

Justus Christian Loder ( born March 12, 1753 Riga, † April 16, 1832 in Moscow) was an anatomist, surgeon and physician to the Russian Tsar Alexander I. His 1794-1803 arisen masterpiece Tabulae anatomicae was the most important in his time systematic and full collection of images of the human body.

Life and work

Youth and studies

Justus Christian Loder grew up as the son of the high school director and deacon John Loder († 1775) in Riga. Influenced by his father Loder appeared already during his school days as a translator of the third part of Leonhard Euler's Lettres à une princesse d' Allemagne ( 1772) and description of Kamchatka Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov of (1773 ). As of 1773 he went to study medicine at the University of Gottingen, where he earned a doctorate in 1777. During this time he translated more scientific journals, including the work of Louis Vitet (1736-1809) to Vieharzneykunst (1776 ).

Jena years

In 1778 Loder was appointed professor of medicine, anatomy and surgery at the University of Jena. At the expense of Duke Carl August of Saxe- Weimar, he went to the years 1780 and 1781 on a trip to France, England and the Netherlands, where he met many scholars and expanded his scientific knowledge. After his return he erected including a hospital and a Accouchierhaus in Jena and was appointed by Carl August for his services to the Weimar court counselor and personal physician. As head of the Jena Naturalienkabinett he put - on the initiative of scientifically interested sovereign and his privy councilor Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - a collection of more than 4,000 anatomical objects, which, however, he took on his departure from Jena in 1803. During his 25 - year career in Jena developed a range of medical journals, among which his written between 1794-1803 Tabulae anatomicae quas ad illustrandam humani corporis fabricam (German Anatomical panels to convey the knowledge of the human body, with Teutscher and Latin text); the most important in his time systematic and comprehensive collection of images of the human body particularly outstanding. Between 1797 and 1801 he edited the journal for surgery, obstetrics and judicial Arzneykunde, published in four volumes.

In his Jena period Loder maintained close contacts with Christoph William hoof and Goethe. From Loder Goethe gained his knowledge of anatomy and learned from him the dissection. This collaboration also resulted in collaboration with Goethe Loder made ​​discovery of the human intermaxillary bone (1784 ) in the Jena anatomy (anatomy tower). Loder was at this time as the leading anatomist in Germany and made in addition to the research and teaching activities in its proper field, as coroner, eye doctor, physiologist and obstetrician earned.

Halle and Königsberg

Appointed in 1799 to the Privy Councilor, he moved in 1803 to the University of Halle, where he re- emerged alongside his teaching career as a professor of medicine through the establishment of a hospital and a clinic for obstetrics. After the entry of the French in Hall due to their victory in the Battle of Jena and Auerstedt in 1806 he turned down an offer of admission to the civil service and instead pursued the Prussian royal family in their exile in Königsberg. After a year as a personal physician of Frederick William III. of Prussia he received on November 27, 1809 for his services, the Prussian nobility diploma.

Imperial Russian personal physician in Moscow

He then went to Saint Petersburg and Moscow, and was commissioned by Tsar Alexander I in 1810 was appointed its personal physician and Imperial Russian State Council. During the French occupation of Moscow in the wake of the Russian campaign of Napoleon he used Russian wounded in specially built for this purpose military hospitals. Between 1814 and 1817 he headed the Moscow military hospital and expanded it to a separate wing for officers, which was funded by a donation of 25,000 rubles of the Moscow merchants at this time. 1818 bought Tsar Alexander Loders anatomical collection of 50,000 silver rubles and donated them to the University of Moscow. In the constructed under his leadership and the Tsar funded with 100,000 rubles new anatomy building, inaugurated in 1819, Loder taught in the coming years as honorary professor of medicine. During this time he published another Latin manual of anatomy ( Elementa anatomiae humani corporis, 1823), and published a list of the preparations of the Moscow anatomical collection (index praeparatorum aliarumque rerum ad anatomist spectantium, 1823). His last book he published after the Moscow cholera epidemic of 1830. Upon his death on 16 April 1832, the Moscow University was erected in his honor a marble bust in the anatomical collection.

Writings (selection )

• Anatomical Manual, Volume 1, 1788 (2nd edition 1800)
• Rudiments of surgical anthropology and the state Pharmacology, 1791 ( 3rd edition in 1800, 1799 and translated into Swedish )
• Surgically medicinische observations, more partly in the Ducal. Saxony- Weimar Hospital Jena collected, Volume 1, 1794
• Tabulae anatomicae quas ad illustrandam humani corporis fabricam, 1794-1803
• Outline of the anatomy of the human body. For the use in lectures and Secir - exercises, Volume 1, 1806
• Elementa anatomiae humani corporis, 1823
• Index praeparatorum aliarumque rerum ad anatomist spectantium, quae in museo Caes. Universitatis Mosquensis servantur, 1823 (2nd edition 1826)