Anton von Störck

Anton von Störck was an Austrian physician, born at Saulgau in Upper Swabia in 1731 and dead in 1803. Orphaned young and raised in a Viennese poorhouse, he studied medicine under Gerard van Swieten and took his doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1757, later serving as dean of the medical faculty and as rector. He became first physician to the Vienna institute for the poor in 1758, treated the empress Maria Theresa for smallpox in 1767 and became her personal physician, and served the emperor Francis I from 1764. He is remembered for clinical research on herbs such as hemlock, henbane, jimsonweed and autumn crocus, which he tried first on animals, then on himself and finally on patients while adjusting the dose, a method regarded as a blueprint for modern clinical trials and as the pioneering work of experimental pharmacology. He was made a baron in 1775.