Joseph Jakob Plenck

Joseph Jakob Ritter Plenk or Plenck (28 November 1738 – 24 August 1807) was a physician and polymath in the Holy Roman Empire. He is now known as a pioneer dermatologist.^[1]

Silhouette of Joseph Jakob Plenck

Life

Plenck was born on 28 November 1738 in Vienna, although some sources give a birth year of 1732.^[2] He graduated at the University of Vienna in 1763, and was a follower of Heinrich Johann Nepomuk von Crantz. An academic at the University of Basel in 1770, he then taught at Tymau, Buda and Pesth. In 1783 he moved to the Josephinum in Vienna.^[1] He died on 24 August 1807.^[2]

In 1861, botanist Siegfried Reisseck published Plenckia, a genus of flowering plants from South America, belonging to the family Celastraceae and named in honour of Joseph Jakob Plenck.^[3]

Works

Plenck was a prolific writer, on subjects including surgery.^[4] In 1776 he published a classification of skin diseases, Doctrina de morbis cutaneis.^[1][5] It introduced a consistent system, dividing dermatosis into 14 classes.^[6]

References

1. Longo, Lawrence D.; Reynolds, Lawrence P. (12 May 2016). Wombs with a View: Illustrations of the Gravid Uterus from the Renaissance through the Nineteenth Century. Springer. p. 162. ISBN 978-3-319-23567-7.
2. von Wurzbach, Constantin, ed. (1870). Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich. Vol. 22. p. 423.
3. "Plenckia Reissek | Plants of the World Online | Kew Science". Plants of the World Online. Retrieved 20 May 2021.
4. de Moulin, D. (6 December 2012). A history of surgery: with emphasis on the Netherlands. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 157–. ISBN 978-94-009-3357-6.
5. von Plenck, Joseph Jacob (1776). Doctrina de morbis cutaneis. publisher not identified.
6. Cowan, Alan; Yosipovitch, Gil (10 April 2015). Pharmacology of Itch. Springer. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-3-662-44605-8.