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Johann Joseph Dömling

Johann Joseph Dömling (13 January 1771 – 7 March 1803) was a German physician, pauper's doctor and professor of physiology at the University of Würzburg. He was the son of a farmer who was unable to afford further education, but as a gifted student, his studies were supported by the prince-bishop Franz Ludwig von Erthal. After his studies of medicine, Dömling went on a study tour, meeting many important physicians of his era as well as the Romantic philosophers Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. He became professor of physiology in Würzburg in 1799 and was popular with his students.

After early publications critical of Schelling's philosophical approach, Dömling became a supporter, basing his textbook on human physiology on Schelling's theories. His textbook also contains the earliest reference to the endogeneous presence of carbon monoxide in human blood. Dömling died at the age of 32 from typhoid fever and pneumonia.

Early life and education

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Juliusspital, Würzburg

Dömling was born on 13 January 1771 in Merkershausen [de], near Bad Königshofen im Grabfeld, Bavaria.[1][2] His father was the farmer Johannes Dömling and his mother was Anna Dorothea Dömling, née Eschbach.[2] Dömling first attended the village school in Merkershausen and then learned some Latin in the nearby Bad Königshofen. His parents were unable to afford a gymnasium education.[3] After being educated at the Juliusspitälisches Studentenkonvikt in the Juliusspital,[4] a boarding school for gifted but impoverished students, he studied at the University of Würzburg, supported by prince-bishop Franz Ludwig von Erthal, who paid for his books and surgical instruments.[5] As a medical student, he assisted the physician Nicolaus Anton Friedreich [de].[6] After Erthal's 1795 death, Dömling's finances were uncertain, and he considered moving to Hamburg with the goal of becoming a naval surgeon in England. However, the new prince-bishop, Georg Karl Ignaz von Fechenbach zu Laudenbach, continued to support him financially and so he was able to finish his studies in Würzburg.[5] Dömling received a doctorate in medicine on 23 June 1797.[6] His medical thesis was Dissertatio inauguralis sistens morborum gastricorum acutorum pathologiam ('Inaugural dissertation on the pathology of acute gastric diseases') and his advisor was Carl Caspar von Siebold.[7][8] The main topic of the thesis is the function and the mechanism of action of bile.[6]

Academic career

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University of Würzburg

After finishing his studies in Würzburg, Dömling went on a study tour. He travelled to Vienna, where he met the physiologist Johann Peter Frank and the obstetrician Johann Lucas Boër and other important physicians. In Göttingen, he met the obstetrician Friedrich Benjamin Osiander. Other stages of his journey were Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Jena (where he met the Romantic philosophers Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling) and Berlin.[5][1] After the 1798 death of Georg Christoph von Siebold [sv], Dömling succeeded him as professor of physiology in Würzburg on 20 August 1799.[9][10] He also became the Stadtarmenarzt, the pauper's doctor [de] of the city of Würzburg.[1][10] This type of organised medical care for prisoners, workhouse residents and the poor in Würzburg started in 1795 and was the foundation for the 1807 establishment of the Würzburg policlinic.[11]

Dömling lectured on all medical subjects, especially physiology, pathology and medical semiotics and was popular with the medical students.[5][12] He married Johanna Adelheid Scheffner (1773–1839) in 1800.[2] They had two children, Apollonia Dömling and G. Joseph Dömling.[13]

Medical philosophy, research and publications

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From early on, Dömling was an opponent of humorism as medical theory.[14] Dömling originally supported a mechanistic physiology.[1] He was also interested in empirical research,[15] for example in the response of organs to electric stimuli.[16] In his 1798 publication Ist die Leber Reinigungsorgan? ('Is the liver a purifying organ') he denied that the liver had a purifying function.[14] In 1800, he published Giebt es ursprünglich Krankheiten der Säfte, welche sind es und welche sind es nicht ('Are there originally diseases of the fluids, which are thus and which are not') he was critical of Schelling's Romantic natural philosophy, but by 1802 had become a supporter.[1][14] His textbook Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen ('Textbook on human physiology') appeared in Göttingen in two volumes in 1802 and 1803.[17] It was based on theories of Schelling, who came to Würzburg as professor of philosophy in 1803.[18] The historian of life sciences, Joan Steigerwald, describes Dömling's textbook as part of a transition from anatomy-based physiology to one based on organic functions.[19] The second volume contains the first description of an endogeneous presence of carbon monoxide in human blood.[20] Similar to John Bostock in 1804, Dömling stated that blood containing carbon monoxide returned to the heart and would then be oxidised to carbon dioxide in the lung, and then exhaled.[21] Together with Philipp Joseph Horsch, Dömling edited the journal Archiv für die Theorie der Heilkunde ('Archive for the Theory of Medicine'); one volume appeared in 1804.[22][23]

Death and aftermath

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Dömling died on 7 March 1803 from typhoid fever and pneumonia.[23][a] The physicians Horsch and Thomann, who attended to Dömling, stated that the typhoid fever was curable but the pneumonia was deadly.[10] A fake letter published in an 1803 journal blamed Horsch for Dömling's death, suggesting the latter had been murdered so Horsch could succeed him.[25] The chair of physiology at Würzburg was given to Ignaz Döllinger.[26]

Works

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  • Dissertatio Inauguralis Sistens Morborum Gastricorum Acutorum Pathologiam (Thesis) (in Latin). University of Würzburg. 1797.
  • Ist die Leber Reinigungsorgan? (in German). Vienna: Franz Josef Rötzel. 1798.
  • Giebt es ursprüngliche Krankheiten der Säfte: welche sind es, und welche sind es nicht (in German). Bamberg and Würzburg: Göbhardt. 1800.
  • Kritik der vorzüglichsten Vorstellungsarten über Organisation und Lebensprincip (in German). Würzburg: Franz Xaver Rienner. 1802.
  • Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen: Generelle Physiologie. Specielle Physiologie. Phänomene der Sensibilität und Aeusserungen der Irritabilität (in German). Göttingen: Dieterich. 1802.
  • Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen: Specielle Physiologie. Wirkungen der Reproductionskraft (in German). Göttingen: Dieterich. 1803.

Footnotes

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  1. ^ The date of 7 March is also given by Hirsch[8] and Gerabek.[1] Georg Sticker gives the date as 15 March.[24]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Gerabek 2007, p. 318.
  2. ^ a b c Engelhardt 2023, p. 111.
  3. ^ Gerabek 1995, p. 238.
  4. ^ Sticker 1932, p. 486.
  5. ^ a b c d Sticker 1932, p. 553.
  6. ^ a b c Gerabek 1995, p. 239.
  7. ^ Universitätsbibliothek Würzburg (1992). Würzburger Hochschulschriften : 1581 - 1803 ; Bestandsverzeichnis. p. 281.
  8. ^ a b Hirsch 1877.
  9. ^ Sticker 1932, p. 533.
  10. ^ a b c Gerabek 1995, p. 240.
  11. ^ Neuner & Nolte 2016, p. 210.
  12. ^ Gerabek 1995, pp. 241, 245.
  13. ^ Intelligenzblatt von Unterfranken und Aschaffenburg des Königreichs Bayern: 1839, 1 (in German). 1839.
  14. ^ a b c Gerabek 1995, p. 242.
  15. ^ Haeser 1875, p. 817.
  16. ^ Engelhardt 2023, pp. 111–112.
  17. ^ Sticker 1932, pp. 553–554.
  18. ^ Steigerwald 2013, p. 71.
  19. ^ Steigerwald 2013, pp. 71–72.
  20. ^ Hopper et al. 2021.
  21. ^ Lanska 2023.
  22. ^ Gerabek 1995, p. 244.
  23. ^ a b Engelhardt 2023, p. 112.
  24. ^ Sticker 1932, p. 554.
  25. ^ Gerabek 1995, pp. 240–241.
  26. ^ Sticker 1932, pp. 551–553.

Sources

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