Jacobæus, Oliger

, a professor of physic and philosophy at Copenhagen, was born in July 1650-1, at Arhusen in the peninsula of Jutland, where his father was bishop, who took all possible care of his son’s education; but dying in 1671, he was sent by his mother, the famous Caspar Bartholin’s daughter, to the university of Copenhagen, where he took the usual degrees, and then travelled to France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, England, and the Netherlands, with a view to improve himself in his profession. On his return home in 1679, he received letters from his prince, appointing him professor of physic and philosophy in the capital of his kingdom. He entered upon the discharge of this post in 1680, and performed the functions of it with the highest reputation; so that, besides the honour conferred on him by the university, Christian V. king of Denmark, committed to him the charge of augmenting and putting into order that celebrated cabinet of curiosities which his predecessors bad begun; and Frederic IV. in 1698, made him a counsellor in his court of justice. Thus loaded with honours, as well as beloved and respected by his compatriots, he passed his days in tranquillity, till the loss of his wife, Anne Marguerete, daughter of Thomas Bartholin, who, after seventeen years of marriage, died in 1698, leaving him father of six boys. This threw him into a melancholy, which at length proved fatal. In vain he sought for a remedy, by the advice of his friends, in a second marriage with Anne Tistorph: his melancholy increased; and, after languishing under it near three years, he died, in 1701, at the age of fifty-one.

His works are as follow: 1. “De Ranis dissertatio, Romae,” 1676, of which a better edition was published at Paris in 1682, 8vo. 2. “Bartholomei Scalae equitis Florentini historia Florentinorum,” &c. Romae, 1677: the famous Magliabecchi furnished him with this ms. from the Medicean library. 3. “Oratio in obitum Tho, Bartholini,” 1681. 4. “Compendium institutionum medicarum,” Hafniae, 1684, 8vo. 5. “De Ranis & Lacertis dissertatio,” 1686. 6. “Francisci Ariosti de oleo mentis Zibinii, seu petroleo agri Mutinensis,” &c. 1690. 7. “Panegyricus Christiano Vto dictus,” 1691. 8. “Gaudia Arctoi orbis ob thalamos augustos Frederici & Ludovicae,” 1691. 9. “Museum regium, sive catalogus rerum, &c. quee in basilica bibliotheca Christiani V. Hafnise asservantur,” 1696, | fol. reprinted with valuable additions in 1710. He had af great talent for poetry, and composed several excellent poems upon various subjects, some of which have been published. He left the character of a good husband, a good master, a good neighbour, and a good friend. ¹