MEDICUS, FRIEDRICH CASIMIR (MEDIKUS, FRIEDRICH KASIMIR)

(b. Grumbach, Rhineland, Germany, 6 January 1736; d. Mannheim, Germany, 15 July 1808)

botany.

Medicus was the most prolific, bitter, witty, and sarcastic of those contemporary opponents of Linnaeus who ignored or assailed his innovations. Apart from invective and references to Linnaeus’ shortcomings, errors, and inconsistencies, Medicus’ numerous works contain many firsthand botanical observations, particularly on Leguminosae, Cruciferae, Malvaceae, and Rosaceae, and are of both historical and nomenclatural importance.

After studying medicine at the universities of Tübingen, Strasbourg, and Heidelberg, in 1759 he became garrison doctor at Mannheim, in the Palatinate (Pfalz) then ruled by the Elector Carl Theodor. The latter founded in 1763 the Academia TheodoroPalatina of Mannheim and in 1766 an associated botanic garden at Medicus’ instigation. In 1766 Medicus spent five months on sick leave in Paris, becoming friendly with the botanists Duhamel du Monceau, Bernard de Jussieu, and Adanson, all of whom favored the generic concepts and nomenclature of Tournefort rather than those of Linnaeus, his successor. Returning to Mannheim, Medicus abandoned medicine for botany and became director of the Mannheim botanic garden. In his many publications based on the study of living plants, he thereafter never lost an opportunity to criticize the works and character of Linnaeus. He angrily called attention to a basic practical weakness of Linnaeus’ generic descriptions: being originally based on the study of one or two species, they often failed to cover adequately other species later added by Linnaeus to the genus by virtue of similarity in habit rather than technical details. He restored many Tournefortian genera and rejected many Linnaean generic names.

It is uncertain how widely his works, written mostly in German rather than Latin, were read at the time. He undoubtedly greatly influenced Conrad Moench at Marburg, whose relatively well-known Methodus plantas horti botanici et agri Marburgensis (1794–1802) brought the same Tournefortian concepts and names to more general notice, although their valid postLinnaean publication dates from Miller’s Gardeners Dictionary Abridged of 1754. Unfortunately, both the Mannheim academy and garden, to which Medicus had given so much attention, suffered almost irreparable damage when Mannheim was heavily bombarded in 1795 and 1799. The academy was closed, its books sold, and the garden did not long outlast the death of Medicus in 1808.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Medicus was a prolific and combative writer. G. Pritzel, Thesaurus litterature botanicae (Leipzig, 1872), 211, lists 16 publications, of which the most notable are Theodora speciosa (Mannheim, 1786); “Versueh einer neuen Lehrart der Pflanzen,” in Vorlesungen der churpfälzischen physikalisch-ökonomischen Gesellschaft,2 (1787), 327–460; Phitosophische Botanik, 2 vols. (Mannheim, 1789–1791); Pflanzengattungen (Mannheim, 1792); Geschichte der Botanik unserer Zeiten (Mannheim, 1793); and Beyträge zur Pflanzen-Anatomie (Leipzig, 1799–1801)

II. Secondary Literature. See (listed in chronological order) A. kistner, Die Pflege der Naturwissenschaften in Mannheim zur Zeit Karl Theodors (Mannheim, 1930); G. Schmid, “Linné im Urteil Joharm Beckmanns, mit besonderer Bezeihung auf F. C. Medicus,” in Svenska linnésällskapets årsskrift,20 (1937), 47–70; W. T. Stearn, “Botanical gardens and botanical literature in the eighteenth century,” in Rachel Hunt, Catatogue of Botanical Books …, II (Pittsburgh, 1961), xli-cxl; and “Early Marburg Botany,” in Conrad Moench, Methodus plantas horti …, Otto Koeltz, ed. (Koenigstein-Taunus, 1966)

William T. Stearn