page_title: Petrus Camper
section_title: Surgeon's Guild
hierarchical_section_title: Petrus Camper / Surgeon's Guild
caption_attribution_description: English: The Indian Elephants Hans and Parki Belonging to the Managerie of Stadholder Willem V
context_page_description: Petrus Camper FRS, was a Dutch physician, anatomist, physiologist, midwife, zoologist, anthropologist, palaeontologist and a naturalist in the Age of Enlightenment. He was one of the first to take an interest in comparative anatomy, palaeontology, and the facial angle. He was among the first to mark out an "anthropology," which he distinguished from natural history. He studied the orangutan, the javan rhinoceros, and the skull of a mosasaur, which he believed was a whale. Camper was a celebrity in Europe and became a member of the Royal Society, the Göttingen, and Russian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the French and the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He designed and constructed tools for his patients, and for surgeries. He was amateur-drawer, a sculptor, a patron of art and a conservative, royalist politician. Camper published some lectures containing an account of his craniometrical methods. These laid the foundation of all subsequent work.
context_section_description: In 1755 he had moved to Amsterdam, where he occupied a chair of anatomy and surgery at the Athenaeum Illustre, later completed by a medicine chair. He investigated inguinal hernia, patella and the best form of shoe. He withdrew five years later to dedicate himself to scientific research, living on his wife's estate "Klein Lankum" just outside Franeker. In his farewell speech, he mentioned that he had dissected more than 50 bodies in public, including a twelve-year-old Angolese black boy. His experience led to the publication of Demonstrationum anatomico-pathologicarum (1760-1762). In 1762 he became politically active and promoted public health issues such as vaccination against smallpox. 
  In 1763 he accepted the chair of anatomy, surgery and botany at the University of Groningen. He made drawings to illustrate his eloquent lectures and the number of students grew.
  His main focus of attention was anatomy, zoology and his collection of minerals and fossils. Among his many works, he studied osteology of birds and discovered the presence of air in the inner cavities of birds' skeletons. He investigated the anatomy of eight young orangutans, establishing it as a different species to humans, as quadrupeds, against the theories of contemporary scientists. "Camper cleared up a lot of confusion when he distinguished the orangutan from the chimpanzee." Petrus Camper published treatises on the hearing of fishes and the sound of frogs. He studied the diseases of rinderpest and rabies (1768-1770). Camper kept a surgical clinic. Before retiring in 1773, he introduced several new instruments and procedures for surgery and obstetrics. Back in Franeker, he dissected an elephant and a Javan rhinoceros, after they died in the menagerie, belonging to the stadtholder. In 1782 he published his latest research, a treatise in which he disagreed with Carl Linnaeus and De Buffon on the taxonomy of apes.
  In 1778 he was visited by Samuel Thomas von Sömmering, who later became a professor in Göttingen. Camper was in contact with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and Johann Heinrich Merck.
  In 1780 he travelled in the company of his son to Wolfenbüttel and met with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. In Potsdam, he was received by Frederick the Great, introduced by Henri de Catt. In Berlin he met with Moses Mendelsohn and Samuel Formey.
  In 1781 he traveled to Hamburg and met with Prince Henry and Charlotte Sophie of Aldenburg; in 1782 Camper visited the Duke Louis Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
  In November 1783 he was a Foreign Founding Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
  In 1783 he was appointed by the stadtholder as one of the burgomasters of Workum and in 1784 became one of the directors of the Admiralty of Friesland. Camper was an Orangist, opposing the patriots.
  In 1785 he visited Edmund Burke.
  In September 1787 he became the president of the state council of the Dutch Republic and warmly welcomed the return of the stadtholder William V of Orange and his wife Wilhelmine of Prussia in the Hague.
  At the end of life he suffered from pleuritis; Camper had a Burgundian lifestyle, drank a good glass of champagne and died.
caption: The Indian Elephants Hans and Parki Belonging to the menagerie of Stadholder Willem V
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