Heinrich Meibom (doctor)

Johann Heinrich Meibom, known in Latin as Meibomius, was a German physician and scholar born in Lübeck in 1638 and died in Helmstedt in 1700. He came from a medical family, as the son of a physician of the same name. He studied medicine at Helmstedt, Groningen and Leiden, then travelled to Italy, France and England to pursue scientific studies. He took his doctorate at Angers in France in 1663 and in 1664 accepted a professorship of medicine at the University of Helmstedt. In 1678 he added a second chair, in history and poetry, and he kept both posts until his death. He wrote 57 medical treatises and is remembered chiefly for describing the sebaceous glands of the eyelid, which still carry his name as the Meibomian glands. He also wrote Latin poetry. His son Brandanus Meibom later became a professor of pathology, semiotics, botany and medicine.