author
Johann Christoph Pohl
1705–1780
A Leipzig physician of the 18th century, he is now best remembered for a curious Latin dissertation on so-called vampires and postmortem folklore. His surviving works sit at the crossroads of medicine, superstition, and early modern scholarship.
1 Audiobook
Dissertationem de hominibvs post mortem sangvisvgis, vvlgo sic dictis Vampyren
by Johann Christoph Pohl, Johann Gottlob Hertel
About the author
Born in Silesia in 1706 and later active in Leipzig, Johann Christoph Pohl was a German physician and academic writer. Reference records and biographical databases consistently identify him as a doctor, and German-language sources note that he died in Leipzig in 1780.
Pohl wrote in Latin on a range of medical subjects, but he is especially notable today for Dissertationem de hominibus post mortem sanguisugis, vulgo sic dictis vampyren, a learned work connected with early vampire beliefs. That unusual subject has helped keep his name in library catalogs and digital archives long after most medical dissertations of his era faded from view.
Some catalogs list his birth year as 1705, while other biographical sources give 1706. Because the records are not fully consistent, it is safest to say that he belonged to the generation of early-18th-century German medical scholars whose work blended formal medicine with the broader intellectual curiosities of their time.