Jan Křtitel Boháč

The now half-forgotten researcher and scholar Jan Křtitel Boháč (1724-1768) was one of the pioneers of zoology and medicine in his time. He travelled through much of Europe, socialised with great scholars and taught at the University in Prague. He published a –in his time very successful– book on marine organisms and was also involved in natural history research in the Czech Kingdom.

Jan Boháč was born in Žinkovy near Nepomuk on the estate of Jan Josef, Count of Vrtba. His father was the administrator of the estate. At the age of seventeen Jan started his university studies in Prague. He first completed the two compulsory preparatory years of philosophy and then continued to the Faculty of Medicine. His histological study of the glands is excellent even by today`s standards. 

His studies in Prague, however, did not seem to have fully satisfied his thirst for knowledge, and so in 1747 he set out to travel. He first visited the famous anatomist Giovanni Morgagni in Padua. Here he also apparently met the researcher Giovanni Pivati, who promoted the therapeutic use of electricity. Boháč also visited other Italian cities, including Naples, where he made observations of marine animals. He continued his travels to France, meeting, among others, the botanist Bernard de Jussieu in Paris. He also visited the Netherlands, Belgium and England. He returned to Prague in 1750. A year later he defended his dissertation on the use of electricity in medicine and in 1752 he was made professor of natural history.

In 1757 the Seven Years` War broke out. Boháč and his wife managed to leave again for Italy before the siege of Prague by the Prussian army of Frederick II. Beside other cities, he stayed for several months in Naples, where he continued his zoological research. In Naples he also established a collaboration with the Norwegian natural scientist Peter Ascani, a pupil of Carl von Linné himself. Boháč also had an audience with Charles III, King of Spain, Sicily and Naples. After his return to Prague in 1748, he worked on the zoological work De quibusdam animalibus marinis (On Selected Marine Animals, published 1761), which gained him international fame and membership in the Royal Society of London and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Beside natural history, he was also made professor of botany.

In the 1760s he made numerous field trips with students of the University in Prague to Bohemia and the territory of present-day Austria. Some of his research was carried out on the instructions of Emperor Stephen of Lorraine himself, and the results of his work reached the hands of Gerard van Swieten, court physician and advisor to Empress Maria Theresa. But the field trips eventually proved fatal for him. In 1768 he caught a cold during an excursion in the vicinity of Klatovy and died at the age of 44. Unfortunately, some of the unpublished manuscripts were lost after his death and the great natural history of Bohemia on which he was working was never published. 

Jan Křtitel Boháč was active in many fields of science, besides those already mentioned, e.g. biophysics and the study of electricity, anatomy, histology and the theory of agriculture. The fact that his portrait is displayed in the Hall of Fame at the University of Padua is testimony to his fame and learning at the time.

Alexandr CHVÁTAL (2015): Jan Křtitel Boháč a jeho diseratce o bolesti z roku 1746. Bolest 18 (1).

Josef VESELÝ (2007): Pokorný a užitečný. Dostupné na https://dvojka.rozhlas.cz/617-schuzka-pokorny-a-uzitecny-7943023 (cit. 16.04.2020)

Jan Křtitel Boháč (Author: Pelzel FM (1777): Abbildungen Böhmisher und Mährischer Gelehrten und Künstler, nebst Kurzen Nachrichten von ihren Leben und Werken. Prag, Iohann Karl Hrana.)