author
Johann Heinrich Meibom
1590–1655
A 17th-century German physician and scholar, he moved between university life and medical practice while writing on everything from diagnosis to drinking customs. His work reflects the wide-ranging curiosity of early modern medicine.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Helmstedt on August 27, 1590, Johann Heinrich Meibom studied medicine in Helmstedt, Wittenberg, Leipzig, and Basel, where he earned his medical doctorate in 1619. In 1620 he became professor of semiotics at the University of Helmstedt, teaching the signs and interpretation of disease at a time when medicine still drew heavily on classical learning.
The upheaval of the Thirty Years’ War pushed him away from university life. By 1625 he had left Helmstedt and settled in Lübeck, where he practiced for many years as the city’s first physician and later served as personal physician to a bishop. He died in Lübeck on May 16, 1655.
Meibom wrote widely in both medicine and learned history and philology. He is especially remembered for books that show how broad early modern scholarship could be, including medical writings and studies of everyday subjects such as beer and other drinks. He was also part of a notable scholarly family: the son of the historian and poet Heinrich Meibom and the father of another physician, also named Heinrich Meibom.