Job Janszoon van Meekeren

Job Janszoon van Meekeren (1611 to 6 December 1666) was a Dutch surgeon who practised in Amsterdam. He trained under the anatomist Nicolaas Tulp and became a surgeon in the city in 1635. Contemporary physicians respected him for his command of the medical literature and for his skill, and he is described as having drawn a firm link between anatomy and surgery. He took a particular interest in hand surgery, and one of his pupils demonstrated flexor tendon repair on corpses. He also wrote a book that gives a good picture of the state of surgery in seventeenth century Amsterdam, naming patients and their addresses, so that the places where events happened can still be identified. His career belongs to the world of the Amsterdam barber-surgeons, whose guilds commissioned group portraits of anatomy lessons, although no portrait of van Meekeren himself has been traced.