Johannes Schenck von Grafenberg

Johannes Schenck von Grafenberg (1530 to 1598), in Latin Ioannes Schenckius, was a German physician. He studied at Tubingen and was later a physician to the city of Freiburg im Breisgau, and he was the father of the physician Johann Georg Schenck von Grafenberg. He was one of the more influential medical authorities of the late Renaissance. His studies of language disturbances caused by brain injuries were advanced by sixteenth century standards, and for this research he is considered a pioneer of neurolinguistics; in his 1584 treatise Observationes Medicae de Capite Humano he describes his own observations of language disorders alongside those of other physicians. His best known work is Observationum medicarum rariorum, libri VII, a seven volume compendium describing pathological conditions of all the parts of the human body, drawn from the medical experience of Schenck and his contemporaries as well as observations taken from sources reaching back to antiquity.