Johann Schröder (physician)

Johann Schröder was a German physician and pharmacologist, born in Bad Salzuflen in 1600 and died in 1664. He is credited as the first person to recognise that arsenic is an element: in 1649 he produced the elemental form of arsenic by heating its oxide, and he published two methods for preparing it. His best-known work is the Pharmacopoeia medico-chymica, a pharmacological treasury that describes compound remedies and the mineral, vegetable and animal drugs of his day in chemical and medical terms. It was printed in many Latin editions from the 1640s, including a revised seventh edition by Johann Ludwig Witzel in 1677, and it appeared in French in 1698 and in German in 1709 and 1718, the German edition with commentary by Friedrich Hoffmann.