Franz Ignaz Pruner

Franz Ignaz Pruner, known as Pruner Bey, was a German medical doctor and anthropologist who lived from 1808 to 1882. Born at Pfreimd in Bavaria, he studied medicine at the University of Munich and took his doctorate in 1830, then went to Paris. In 1831 he joined a journey through India, Palestine, Syria, Egypt and Greece during which he observed cholera and plague epidemics and studied the treatment of leprosy in Jerusalem. He took a chair of anatomy and physiology at the medical school at Abu Zabal in Egypt, studied ophthalmology at Pavia, and in 1833 returned to Egypt to direct a military hospital near Cairo. In 1835 he went to Mecca to help fight a cholera epidemic, and in 1836 he became director of the military hospitals in Cairo and later professor of ophthalmology there. In 1849 Abbas I made him personal physician with the title Bey. He presided over the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1865 and died at Pisa.