Job Janszoon van Meekeren

Job Janszoon van Meekeren was a pupil of Nicolaas Tulp (1593-1674). He became a surgeon in 1635 and mainly practiced medicine in his native town. He was both city surgeon, surgeon to the admiralty and the hospital and achieved a great reputation as an operator. Nicolaas Tulp and Albrecht von Haller (1798-1777) called him “chirurgis industrius" and “celebris et candidus chirurgus”, respectively.

Under the name “milde Wassersucht” he described a cyst in the spleen. In amputations of limbs he applied artificial bloodlessness, and devised an instrument for the punctation of the hypopyon. Meekeren was also first to record a bone graft. In Chapter 1 og his book he states that he read a report of it in a letter received by the Reverend Engebert Sloot of Slooterdijk from John Kraanwinkel, a missionary in Russia, where the operation had been performed. It consisted of the transplantation of a piece of bone from a dog's skull into a cranial defect in a soldier. Although healing was perfect, the Church ordered the removal of the graft.

• Heel- en geneeskonstige aanmerkingen.
  Posthumous publication; Amsterdam, C. Commelijn, 1668; Rotterdam, 1730; Haag, 1773.
  German translation, Nürnburg, 1675
  Latin by Abrah. Blasius, Amsterdam, 1682.
  The original was reprinted by Alphen a.d. Rijn, Stafleu, 1979.