- A dictionary of medical eponyms

August Quirinus Bachmann

Born  1652
Died  1723

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German anatomist and botanist, born December 9, 1652, Leipzig; died December 20, 1723, Leipzig. Commonly known as Augustus Quirinus Rivinus

Biography of August Quirinus Bachmann

August Quirinus Bachmann, more commonly known as Rivinus, was the son of Andreas Bachmann (1601-1656), professor of poetry and later of medicine at Leipzig, who had changed his name from Bachmann to the Latin Rivinus.

Rivinus was taught by private tutors and from 1669 studied medicine in Leipzig under Michael Ettmüller (1644-1732), Gottfried Welsch (1618-1690), and Johannes Bohn (1640-1718). He became Bachelor of philosophy on April 16, 1670 and Magister on January 15, 1671. He received his medical doctorate at the University of Helmstädt on October 15, 1676 and was habilitated as a lecturer at the University of Leipzig in 1677, becoming a member of the medical faculty in 1688. After having been appointed professor of physiology and botany in 1691, he successively held the chairs of pathology and therapy (from 1719). He was head of the medical garden at the university. Rivinus was dean of the medical faculty from 1719. He died of lithiasis of the bladder and kidneys.

Rivinus published a large number of treatises concerning the disciplines he represented. An almost complete list of his work is compiled under the title of Dissertatione medicae diversis temporibus habitae, nunc vero in unum fasciculum collectae. Leipzig, 1710.

Besides medicine he published works concerning astronomy. Observations on sunspots fascinated him so much that he was almost totally blinded for the last ten years of his life. He was a member of the Royal Society

Bibliography

  • Introductio generalis in rem herbarium.
    3 volumes. Leipzig, 1690, 1691, 1699. On his system of botany.
  • Censura medicamentorum officinalium. Lipsiae, J. Fritsch, 1701. 1701.
    A list of officially recognised drugs, with a classification of useless and undesirable ones. Rivinus also noted incompatibles.-
  • Pathologia animata.
  • De auditus viciis. Leipzig, 1717.
    Dissertation published by his son Johannes Augustus Quirinus Rivinus under the supervision of his father. Reprinted by Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) in his Disput. anat. select. 1749; 4: 309-335. In this work Bachmann wrongly ascribed the discovery of the exit canal of the glandula sublingualis to his father.

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