Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Maria Theresia

  • Gerard van Swieten and his reforms

    A massive statue in Vienna shows the empress Maria Theresia, imperial in bronze as she had been in life, surrounded by her generals and by an ennobled Dutch physician, the Baron Gerard van Swieten. She had recruited him from the medical department of the great Herman Boerhaave in Leiden, and he had come to Vienna…