Hieronymus David Gaubius

Hieronymus David Gaubius (1705 to 1780) was a German physician and chemist, born in Heidelberg, who spent his teaching career at Leiden. He studied medicine and the sciences at Harderwijk and Leiden, where Hermann Boerhaave and Bernhard Siegfried Albinus were among his teachers, and took his degree at Leiden in 1725 with a thesis on the solid parts of the human body. After further training in Paris he practised in Amsterdam and Deventer. In 1731 Boerhaave invited him to Leiden as lecturer in chemistry, and in 1734 he became full professor of medicine and chemistry. He is credited with isolating menthol in 1771 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1764. His textbook on systematic pathology, Institutiones Pathologiae medicinalis (1758), remained in use for many years.