Riga Municipal Physician Nicolaus Witte von Lilienau (1618–1688): His Medical Views at the Crossroads of Tradition and Changes in Medical Teaching during his Student Years at Dutch Universities in the 1640s

The main subject of this article, Nicolaus Witte von Lilienau (1618– 1688), a native of Riga was the city’s municipal physician in 1652–1688. His studies at university proceeded during the 1640s in Netherlands, particularly at Leiden but also at Utrecht and Franeker. The universities of Leiden and Utrecht, in particular, developed at that time into strongholds for the supporters of Harvey’s theory of blood circulation and the philosophy of Descartes, from where those supporters spread the ideas that gradually found acceptance elsewhere as well. Witte was fortunate to have a closeup view of the fierce opposition between supporters and opponents of the philosophy of Descartes. Witte defended three disputations, two of which exercitii causa. The first was at Leiden on abdominal dropsy in 1645, the second was at Franeker on arthritis in 1647. He defended his doctoral dissertation on the plague at Leiden in 1648. Witte’s views on physiology were pioneering in all of his disputations. Under the apparent influence of his teacher Johannes Walaeus, Witte considered the teaching of blood circulation to be self-evident. Blood circulation was not the specific object of his research but used in interpreting the internal causes of illnesses. Witte’s choice of sides was his dedication 1 This article has been completed with the support of the Estonian Scientific Competency Council Project SF 018004s08 and the Estonian Science Foundation Grant Project no. 8938. The article would not have been completed without the assistance of Maria Luštšik, who kindly made available copies of seventeenthcentury disputations and secondary literature, or without the assistance of Anti Lääts, who transcribed early modern era publications into file formats suitable for blind researcher. Peeter Tammisto translated this article from Estonian into English. cta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum Vol. 2, No. 2 (Autumn 2014) DOI: 10.11590/abhps.2014.2.05