Johannes Heurnius

He was born in Utrecht, and studied at Leuven and Paris. He went to the University of Padua to study under Hieronymus Fabricius; and graduated M.D. there in 1566, examined by Petrus Ramus and Fabricius.

He wrote on the Great Comet of 1577; at that time he was town physician in Utrecht. In 1581 he became professor of medicine at the University of Leiden. He had already a reputation and good contacts with humanist scholars; and was appointed as senior to Gerardus Bontius, an earlier physician on the faculty.

He was a pioneer of the bedside teaching of medicine, and has been given credit for his methods. From Padua he brought not only anatomy in the tradition of Vesalius, but anatomical demonstrations and practical clinical work. It is not clear, however, if the 1591 proposal by Heurnius and Bontius to implement practical teaching on the Paduan lines was accepted officially. The physician Otto Heurnius was his son; Heurnius's ideas on teaching were transmitted widely through Otto, Franciscus Sylvius, Govert Bidloo and Herman Boerhaave. After his father's death, Otto put together his lectures, published in the Opera Omnia, covering medicine both in theory and as a practical discipline. He died in Leiden.