Lorenz Heister

Lorenz Heister (1683 to 1758), also written Laurentius Heister, was a German anatomist, surgeon and botanist born in Frankfurt am Main. He studied at Giessen and Wetzlar, then anatomy at Amsterdam under Frederik Ruysch and at Leiden, took his doctorate at Harderwijk in 1708, and served as a field surgeon with the Dutch army during the War of the Spanish Succession. He was professor of anatomy and surgery at Altdorf from 1711 and at Helmstedt from 1720, where he also taught botany and practical medicine, and he became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1730. His best-known book, Chirurgie, was translated into several languages, used in Japan, and still a standard text at Vienna in 1838. In 1718 he coined the word tracheotomy, and he is credited with the first post-mortem section of appendicitis. The plant genus Heisteria is named for him.