Background
Franz Ignaz Pruner was born on March 8, 1808, in Pfreimd, Schwandorf, Germany. Pruner was the son of Ignace Brunner, a civil servant, and Catherine Hochler, the daughter of a municipal councilor.
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Pruner entered the University of Munich in 1826, and began his medical studies there the next year, becoming an assistant to Ernest von Grossi, a specialist in experimental medicine. Pruner received the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1830.
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Pruner entered the University of Munich in 1826, and began his medical studies there the next year, becoming an assistant to Ernest von Grossi, a specialist in experimental medicine. Pruner received the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1830.
A letter written and signed by Pruner Bey.
University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
In 1833 Pruner went to Malta, Sicily, and Italy, where he studied ophthalmology at Pavia.
anthropologist ethnologist ophthalmologist scientist
Franz Ignaz Pruner was born on March 8, 1808, in Pfreimd, Schwandorf, Germany. Pruner was the son of Ignace Brunner, a civil servant, and Catherine Hochler, the daughter of a municipal councilor.
Pruner entered the University of Munich in 1826, and began his medical studies there the next year, becoming an assistant to Ernest von Grossi, a specialist in experimental medicine. Pruner received the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1830. In 1833 Pruner went to Malta, Sicily, and Italy, where he studied ophthalmology at Pavia.
After Pruner received the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1830, then, with a fellow student, Sebastian Fischer, he began to prepare an edition of the manuscripts that had been left unpublished at Grossi’s death the preceding year. In 1831 Pruner went to Paris to continue his medical studies; he there met Etienne Pariset, who aroused his interest in traveling in the East. The same year, Pruner accompanied K. M. von Hügel on a voyage to Greece, Syria, Palestine, India, and Egypt, where they observed cholera and plague epidemics and, in Jerusalem, studied the treatment of lepers. At the same time, Pruner laid the basis for his anthropological work, making careful observations of various populations (particularly the Druses of Sidon) and relating their characteristics to their native soils and climates.
In September 1831 Pruner was in Alexandria, where the pasha offered him the chair of anatomy and physiology at the medical school at Abu Za’bal, which had been founded in 1825 by A. B. Clot. Pruner accepted but returned in 1832 to Munich, where he resumed his work in publishing Grossi’s papers.
In 1833 he went back to Egypt to become director of a military hospital near Cairo; he then practiced ophthalmology at Hejaz, and, in 1835, went to Mecca to help combat a cholera epidemic. In 1836 he was given the rank of captain and appointed a director of military hospitals in Cairo itself; he was particularly concerned with typhus and trachoma, which he treated with a mixture of Luxor water and a saturated solution of zinc and alum. He was subsequently named professor of ophthalmology at Cairo.
During his years in Egypt, Pruner studied the Arab peoples, Arab literature, and ancient Arab medicine. He observed the coastal regions and formed zoological and ethnographic collections, which he subsequently gave to the Bavarian government.
In 1846, during a stay in Munich, he presented to the Royal Academy a report on the ancient races of Egypt and published a study of the medical topography of Cairo, the first work in the field of geographical pathology.
In 1849 Abbas Pasha named Pruner his personal physician, with the title “Bey.” Ill health made it necessary for Pruner to go to Europe the following year, and although he returned to Egypt in 1852, he found that he could no longer tolerate the climate. He spent some time in Bavaria, Baden, and Geneva, but his health did not improve, and Abbas Pasha accepted his resignation in 1860. Pruner then moved to Paris. He continued his anthropological studies and was elected an associate member of the Socie d’Anthropologie, serving as its president in 1865.
In 1872 he settled in Pisa, where he died ten years later, following a brief illness.
(Volume 2)
1832Pruner considered anthropology the “science of sciences.” Pruner studied the racial structure of Negros in Egypt. In a book which he wrote in 1846, he claimed that Negro blood had a negative influence on the Egyptian moral character. He published a monograph on Negros in 1861. He claimed that the main feature of the Negros skeleton is prognathism, which he claimed was Negros relation to the ape. He also claimed that Negros had very similar brains to apes and that Negros have a shortened big toe which is a character which connects the Negros close to apes.
Pruner was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of the Society of Anthropology of Paris.