Dessenius, Bernard

, an eminent physician, born at Amsterdam in 1510, was sent first to Lou vain, where he soon distinguished himself by his acquirements in classical literature. Declaring at length for the practice of medicine, he went to Bologna, in Italy, and in 1538 he took his degree of doctor in that faculty. A vacancy happening soon after at Groningen, he accepted the office of | professor of the practice of medicine, which he taught with reputation for nine years. From thence, invited by Echtius, professor in medicine there, he went to Cologne, where he was admitted member of the college of physicians, and received a considerable pension from the government. This he retained to the time of his death, in 1574. He was author of several useful works. His “De Compositione Medicamentorum,” 1555, fol. contains many valuable observations and improvements on the formulae used in his time. “De Peste, commentarius, preservatio, et curatio,” Col. 1564, 4to. He speaks of a leathern, jacket, which had passed into the hands of twenty-five persons, who had received the infection from it, and been destroyed, before the cause was discovered. He wrote also in defence of the ancient medicine, and against the practice introduced by Paracelsus. ¹