Martin Ruland the Elder

Martin Ruland the Elder (1532 to 3 February 1602) was a German physician, alchemist and classical philologist, born in Freising and also known as Martinus Rulandus or Martin Rulandt. The son of the pharmacist Balthasar Ruland, he was a follower of Paracelsus. He first worked as a balneologist in Giengen and from about 1565 taught pharmacology, physics and Greek at the Gymnasium Illustre in Lauingen, where he was also city physician and personal physician to Count Palatine Philipp Ludwig. He later moved to Prague as personal physician to Emperor Rudolf II and stayed there until his death. His writings rest on the alchemical views of his time; he mostly used antimony-containing emetics, and his antimony potassium tartrate emetic, Ruland's water, stayed in pharmacopoeias until the nineteenth century. His case collections are credited with the first description of the clinical symptoms of what is now called Rolandic epilepsy, in 1597. Four of his sons also became doctors.