Johann Jakob Rau Latinized as Johannes Jacobus Rau (with the variants Rouw or Ravius) (1668 – 18 September 1719) was a Dutch surgeon and anatomist who made advances in lithotomy or the treatment of urinary stones.
![](http://up.wiki.x.io/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Johannes-Jacob-Rau.jpg/220px-Johannes-Jacob-Rau.jpg)
Rau was born in Baden-Baden, to wine merchant Johannes and Magdalena Muller. He then worked with a surgeon in Strassburg (or Regensburg as given in some sources) and later assisted a surgeon in Bergen, Norway. He then served on a naval ship Graaf van Bentheim and returned to study medicine. He studied surgery in Leiden and Paris and defended his doctoral dissertation in 1694. He then worked in Amsterdam where he worked with Frederik Ruysch and developed his own surgical technique for lithotomy. It was a period when procedures were secret and lithotomists gained considerable reputation or fell in favour due to failures. Rau's lateral approach technique made him the principal lithotomist of the period, displacing the travelling Frenchman Jacques Beaulieu (1651 – 1719) who called himself Frère Jacques.[1] Lorenz Heister learned the technique and others spread this method around Europe.[2] In 1713, he was given the post of professor of medicine at the University of Leiden. In 1719, he was dismissed from professorship following mental illness.[3][4] He was succeeded by Bernard Siegfried Albinus.[5]
References
edit- ^ Riches, E. (1968). "The history of lithotomy and lithotrity". Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 43 (4): 185–199. ISSN 0035-8843. PMC 2312308. PMID 4880647.
- ^ Carpue, J.C. (1819). A history of the high operation for the stone, by incision above the pubis : with observations on the advantages attending it : and an account of the various methods of lithotomy, from the earliest periods to the present time. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, and J. Callow, Paternoster Row, and J. Callow. pp. 36–38.
- ^ Zedler, Johann Heinrich, ed. (1741). "Rau, Joh. Jacob". Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon Aller Wissenschafften und Künste (in German). Vol. 30. Leipzig. p. 1043.
- ^ Jöcher, Christian Gottlieb, ed. (1751). "Rau oder Ravius (Johann Jacob)". Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon. Band 3: M–R (in German). Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Gleditsch. p. 1923.
- ^ Boer, Lucas L.; Boek, Peter L. J.; van Dam, Andries J.; Oostra, Roelof-Jan (2018). "History and highlights of the teratological collection in the Museum Anatomicum of Leiden University, The Netherlands". American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A. 176 (3): 618–637. doi:10.1002/ajmg.a.38617. PMC 5838553. PMID 29399953.