Johann Gottfried Bremser

Johann Gottfried Bremser (lithograph, ca. 1820)

Johann Gottfried Bremser (19 August 1767 in Wertheim am Main – 21 August 1827 in Vienna) was a German-Austrian parasitologist and hygienist.

In 1796 he received his medical doctorate from the University of Jena, and following graduation, took a study tour through Germany, Switzerland and Italy. In 1797 he settled in Vienna as a physician.^[1] He developed an interest in the field of helminthology, and by way of a request from Carl Franz Anton Ritter von Schreibers, director of the Naturalienkabinette in Vienna, he started a helminth collection in around 1806, which eventually became one of the better parasitic worm collections in the world.^[2][3] In 1815 he conducted scientific research in Paris. In 1825 he succumbed to illness, and two years later died in Vienna at the age of 60.^[4]

He was at the forefront of medical vaccinations in Vienna, and argued the case for compulsory cowpox vaccinations for all citizens.^[2]

Selected works

• Über die Kuhpocken, 1801 – (On cowpox).
• Über lebende Würmer im lebenden Menschen, 1819 (On living worms in living humans); later translated into French and published as Traité zoologique et physiologique sur les vers intestinaux de l'homme, 1824.
• Icones helminthum systema Rudolphii entozoologicum illustrantes, 1824.^[5]

References