Johann Peter Frank
Frank, Johann Peter
Born Mar. 19, 1745, in Rodalben, Pfalz; died Apr. 24, 1821, in Vienna. Clinician, hygienist, and reformer of medical education.
Frank graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Heidelberg in 1766. He was a professor in the medical faculties of the universities of Göttingen (1784–85), Pavia (1785–95), and Vienna (1795–1804). Between 1804 and 1808 he held academic positions in Russia: after serving as a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Vil’na (1804–05), he was professor at the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy and rector of the academy (1805–08). In 1808 he returned to Vienna.
Frank instituted reforms in midwifery and military medicine, made prosection a regular practice in hospitals, and introduced the mandatory teaching of pathological anatomy. In his major work A Total Medical Police System, which was particularly concerned with the enactment of sanitary codes, he laid the basis for a separate scientific discipline dealing with the problems of social medicine and public health.
WORKS
System einer vollständigen medicinischen Polizey, vols. 1–9. Mannheim, 1779–1827.De curandis hominum morbis epitome, parts 1–6. Mannheim, 1792–1821.