Laurentius Blumentrost
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Laurentius Blumentrost | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | November 8, 1692 |
| Died | March 27, 1755 (aged 62) |
| Alma mater | Leiden University |
| Occupation | Physician |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Fellow of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences |
| Doctoral advisor | Herman Boerhaave |
Laurentius Blumentrost (Russian: Лаврентий Лаврентьевич Блументрост; 8 November 1692 – 27 March 1755) was a Russian Imperial state figure, the personal physician to the Tsar Peter the Great, founder and first president of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, from December 7, 1725, to June 6, 1733.
Blumentrost was born in Moscow on October 29 (Julian calendar) or November 8, 1692 (Gregorian calendar). His father, Laurentius Blumentrost the Elder, a man of German origins, was personal physician to Tsar Alexis. Laurentius taught his son Latin and Greek, He later studied under Justus Samuel Scharschmidt and at Pastor Glück's Lutheran school in the German settlement in Moscow.[1] In 1706, he began to attend university at Halle, then Oxford and finally Leiden, where he studied under Herman Boerhaave,[2] defended his thesis, De secretione animali, in 1713 and received a medical degree in 1714. In 1716 a pharmacopoea titled Blumentrost's house and travel apothek was published by the physician Johann Georg Hoyer who wrote in the preface that Blumentrost was driven not by honor and money to serve in Russia but answering a divine call to duty.[3]
Court physician
On his return to Russia, Blumentrost was appointed personal physician to Princess Natalia, Tsar Alexis's daughter and Tsar Peter the Great's sister. He continued his studies in Paris and Amsterdam (with Frederik Ruysch, from whom he bought anatomical specimens on behalf of the Russian government for the Kunstkamera). After his return to St. Petersburg, Peter the Great sent him to the Olonets Governorate to study the Marcial mineral springs in Kondopozhsky District.
When Robert Erskine, the Tsar's Scottish-born personal physician, died in 1718, Blumentrost was appointed to the position. He kept Johann Daniel Schumacher, Erskine's assistant who had studied at the University of Strasbourg and had been in charge of the Imperial Library and the Kunstkamera under Erskine, on as his secretary.[1][2]
