Johannes Schenck von Grafenberg

Johannes Schenck von Grafenberg, in Latin Ioannes Schenckius, was a German physician of the sixteenth century who studied at Tübingen and was later physician to the city of Freiburg im Breisgau. He was the father of the physician Johann-Georg Schenck von Grafenberg. He was one of the more influential authorities on medicine in the late Renaissance. His studies of language disturbances caused by brain injuries are considered advanced by the standards of his century, and because of this research he is regarded as a pioneer of neurolinguistics. In 1584 he published the treatise Observationes Medicae de Capite Humano, in which he sets out his own observations of language disorders together with those of other physicians.