Franz Tappeiner
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Franz Tappeiner, Edler von Tappein (7 January 1816, Laas – 20 August 1902, Meran) was an Austrian physician and anthropologist. He was the father of pharmacologist Hermann von Tappeiner.
He studied at the universities of Prague, Padua and Vienna, and afterwards he opened a medical practice in his hometown of Laas. Later on, he became a renowned physician in Meran, about which he advocated fresh-air therapy for tuberculosis patients and water treatments for sufferers of typhus.[1]
Franz Tappeiner was born as the son of the Lorentzhof farmer Josef and his wife Katharina Lechthaler in Laas in Vinschgau. After attending the Benedictine high school in Merano,he completed a medical degree and received his doctorate in January 1843 in Vienna. Back in Laas, in the same year he helped, through his medical guidance, patients from all over the Habsburg monarchy and opened his first medical clinique as well as a pharmacy. In 1846 he moved to Merano where an year later, in 1847 he married Mathilde von Tschiderer born in Bolzano, Italy. They had two children: the future pharmacologist Hermann Von Tappeiner (1847–1927), and Hedwig (1849-1929). In 1848, after asking the "honest electors" not to be afraid of the Lutheran confession, he lost the election to the Frankfurt National Assembly and he devoted himself exclusively to his medical practice with the aim of further developing an appropriate sanitary infrastructure. This was only possible in 1850 where Tappeiner as well as physicians Gottlieb Putz and Hans Pircher founded the "Kurkomittee", later defined in 1855 as the "Kurverwaltung", an association of welfare involved in local politics and in the shaping of the Merano's welfare and sanitary regulations. It was in that same year that Tappeiner, owing to the cholera epidemic, was able to decrease the spreading of infections among the townspeople by explaining the compulsory precautions citizens needed to take in order to stay safe. This gave the physician fame as well as eagerness to continue his scientific discoveries using animals as means. Many of this experiments were carried in the Anatomical and Pathological Institute of Munich and assisted by the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow in the "charité" situated in Berlino.[2] In 1878 after the death of his wife he turned to anthropology.[3] A skull collection created by him is now in the Natural History Museum in Vienna.In 1898, Emperor Franz Joseph bestowed on him the inheritable title of noble "von Tappein" and on August 19, 1902, Tappeiner died at his residence, the Reichenbach residence, in Obermais.
As an anthropologist, he is best known for his studies of the inhabitants of Tyrol. Throughout his career his collection of skulls was left to the Vienna Museum of Natural History and to the Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck.[1]
Tappeiner was also active as a botanist. He described and herbarized over 6,000 plants.[4] Tappeiner put at his own expense Tappeinerweg to an extension after nearly six-kilometer promenade in Meran and Dorf Tirol. The Tappeinerweg (Tappeiner Promenade), a popular 4 km trail in the city of Merano is named after him,[5] as is the "Franz Tappeiner Hospital", also located in Merano.