Johann Nepomuk Rust

Johann Nepomuk Rust (1775 to 1840) was an Austrian surgeon and military physician, born at Jánský Vrch near Javorník in Austrian Silesia, in what is now the Czech Republic. He studied medicine in Prague, took a degree in obstetrics in 1799 and a doctorate in surgery in 1800, and then worked briefly in Vienna and Paris. He taught at the Lyceum in Olomouc, served as professor of surgery at the University of Kraków from 1803 to 1810, where he set up a surgical clinic, and in 1810 became chief surgeon at the General Hospital in Vienna. From 1815 he served as a physician in the Prussian military, directed the new surgical and ophthalmological clinic at the Charité in Berlin, became Surgeon General in 1822 and was a full professor at the University of Berlin from 1824. He edited a journal of medicine from 1816 and wrote a multi-volume surgical textbook published between 1830 and 1836. His name survives in Rust's disease, tuberculosis of the two upper cervical vertebrae. He died in 1840 on his estate in Silesia.