1762-1836

German physician who spent much of his career debunking medical myths, fallacies, and chicaneries. He attacked Franz Joseph Gall's phrenology, Franz Mesmer's animal magnetism, and John Brown's theory of tissue excitability, "Brunonianism." He supported and popularized serious science, defended Edward Jenner during the vaccination controversy, edited four medical journals, and encouraged cleanliness as a means to long life. He was the personal physician of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe at Weimar, and later taught at the universities of Jena and Berlin.