Gerhard van Swieten
| Gerard van Swieten | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 7 May 1700 Leiden |
| Died |
18 June 1772 (aged 72) Vienna |
| Residence | Austria |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physician |
| Doctoral advisor | Herman Boerhaave |
| Doctoral students |
Nikolaus von Jacquin Anton von Störck |
Gerard van Swieten (7 May 1700 – 18 June 1772) was a Dutch-Austrian physician.
Van Swieten was born in Leiden. He was a pupil of Herman Boerhaave and became in 1745 the personal physician of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. In this position he implemented a transformation of the Austrian health service and medical university education. He was the proposer of the main sanitary reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, "Generale Normativum in Re Sanitatis", implemented by Maria Theresa in 1770. He founded a botanical garden, a chemical laboratory and introduced clinical instruction. Since 1745 he was also librarian for Maria Theresa in what was then the Imperial Library.
Beside his medical activities, Gerard van Swieten was also active as a reformer. Especially the censorship was organised in a different way under his direction. He drove out the Jesuits that were in charge of the censorship before and carried out a centralisation of the censorship that was only partly successful. He also tried to use scientific and rational aspects for the judgement of literature.
Especially important is his part in the fight against superstition during the enlightenment, particularly in the case of the vampires, reported from villages in Serbia in the years between 1718 and 1732.
After the last of the wars against the Turks in 1718, some parts of the land, such as Northern Serbia and a part of Bosnia, went to Austria. The parts were settled with refugees with the special status of duty-free farmers. However, they had to take care of the agricultural development and secure the frontiers so reports about vampires reached, for the first time, German-speaking areas.
In 1755 Gerard van Swieten was sent by Empress Maria Theresa to Moravia to investigate the situation relating to vampires. He viewed the vampire myth as a "barbarism of ignorance" and his aim was to eradicate it.
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