Gustav Jäger (naturalist)

Gustav Jäger (1832 to 1917) was a German zoologist, physician and health reformer. Born at Bürg on the Kocher, he was first meant to become a pastor, left the seminary at Urach, studied medicine and natural science at Tübingen and took a medical doctorate. After a tutor post in Vienna he qualified there in 1858 in zoology and comparative anatomy, and co-founded and until 1866 directed a zoological garden in Vienna. From 1867 he was professor of zoology and anthropology at Hohenheim, from 1870 at the Stuttgart Polytechnic, and from 1874 also taught physiology and histology at the Stuttgart veterinary school. In 1884 he left state service and settled in Stuttgart as a physician. He argued for Darwin and held that heredity, instincts and food choice rest on specific scent-borne soul substances. His health teaching led him to introduce a woollen normal clothing, the Jägerhemd, meant to let harmful body odours escape; it was widely mocked but won many followers. He died at Stuttgart in 1917.