Johann Beringer

Johann Bartholomeus Adam Beringer was a German physician and professor of medicine at the University of Würzburg, born in 1670 and died on 11 April 1738. He was the son of a doctor at the Würzburg Julius Hospital, studied medicine, and became a professor at Würzburg, where he also took part in dissection. From 1701 he was chief physician of the Julius Hospital. He published a treatise on preserving the health of the human body in 1710, a catalogue of the exotic perennial plants in the Würzburg medical garden in 1722, and a study of the Kissingen mineral springs in 1738. He is best known, however, as the victim of a hoax: colleagues planted carved stones that he took for genuine fossils and described in his 1726 book on the Würzburg Lying Stones. When he discovered the fraud he tried to recall the book and took the hoaxers to court, and he won the case but never recovered his reputation. A palaeontology journal, Beringeria, is named after him.