Johann Jakob Wepfer

Johann Jakob Wepfer was a Swiss pathologist and pharmacologist, a native of Schaffhausen, born in 1620 and dead in 1695. He studied medicine at Strasbourg, Basel and Padua and returned to Schaffhausen in 1647 to practise, with patients reaching into southern Germany and occasional service as physician to royalty. He is remembered for his study of the vascular anatomy of the brain and of cerebrovascular disease, and was the first physician to propose that a stroke could be caused by bleeding in the brain. His 1658 treatise Historiae apoplecticorum became a classic. He also made experimental contributions to pharmacology and toxicology, notably on water hemlock, in his 1679 Cicutae aquaticae historia et noxae. A stroke research award is named for him.