Fuchs, Leonhard

Fuchs, Leonhard (1501-1566), German physician and botanist, was born at Wembdingen in Bavaria on the 17th of January 1501. He attended school at Heilbronn and Erfurt, and in 1521 graduated at the university of Ingolstadt. About the same time he espoused the doctrines of the Reformation. Having in 1524 received his diploma as doctor of medicine, he practised for two years in Munich. He became in 1526 professor of medicine at Ingolstadt, and in 1528 physician to the margrave of Anspach. In Anspach he was the means of saving the lives of many during the epidemic locally known as the “English sweating-sickness.” By the duke of Württemberg he was, in 1535, appointed to the professorship of medicine at the university of Tübingen, a post held by him till his death on the 10th of May 1566. Fuchs was an advocate of the Galenic school of medicine, and published several Latin translations of treatises by its founder and by Hippocrates. But his most important publication was De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Basel, 1542), a work illustrated with more than five hundred excellent outline illustrations, including figures of the common foxglove and of another species of the genus Digitalis, which was so named by him.

Fuchsia coccinea.

1, Flower cut open after removal of sepals; 2, fruit; 3, floral diagram.