PRUNER BEY, FRANZ IGNACE

(b. Pfreimd, Germany, 8 March 1808; d. Pisa, Italy, 29 September 1882)

medicine, ethnology, anthropology.

Pruner was the son of Ignace Brunner, a civil servant, and Catherine Hochler, the daughter of a municipal councillor. He entered the University of Munich in 1826, and began his medical studies there the next year, becoming assistant to Ernest von Grossi, a specialist in experimental medicine. Pruner received the M.D. in 1830, then, with a fellow student, Sebastian Fischer, began to prepare an edition of the manuscripts that had been left unpublished at Grossi’s death the preceding year.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 Pruner went to Malta, Sicily, and Italy, where he studied ophthalmology at Pavia. In the same year 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 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.

Pruner considered anthropology the “science of sciences.” He did a considerable amount of original work in the field, including investigations of comparative nosology, based upon the observation of the relation between individuals and their environments. Among his many communications to the Societe d’Anthropologie, the most important concern craniology, including a series of three remarkable tables, recording more than 15,000 measurements of 507 craniums. His craniological work led Pruner into a dispute with Paul Broca, since Pruner held that the Basques (the origin of whose language he had also studied) were brachycephalic, while Broca maintained that they were dolichocephalic.

Pruner was a participant in a number of international scientific conferences and received honors and decorations from several countries. In 1872 he settled in Pisa, where he died ten years later, following a brief illness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Pruner Bey’s books include Tentamen de morborum transitionibus (Munich, 1830), his doctoral thesis; his ed. of Grossi’s Historic morbi et descriptio sectionis cadareris (Munich, 1830); Grossi’s Opera nwdica posthuma, 3 vols. (Stuttgart-Tübingen-Munich, 1831-1832). edited with S. Fischer; Ist dent die Pest wirkich ein austeckendes Uchel?(Munich, 1839); Ueber die Veberbleibsel der altcnagyptischen Menschcrace (Munich, 1846); Die Krankheitcn des Orients com Stand-ptinkte der verglcichcnden Nosologic betrachtet (Erlangen, 1847); Topographie médicate du Caire avec le plan de la ville et des environs Munich, 1847); Die weltseuche Cholera oder die Polizei der Natur (Erlangen, 1851); Der Metisch im Raume und in der Zeit … Eine ethno-graphische Skizze(Munich, 1859); and Les carthaginois en France. La colonie lybio-phénicienne du Liby, canton de Bourg-Saint-Andéol (Montpellier, 1870), written with J. Ollier de Marichard.

Among Pruner’s many articles are “Communication sur les Druses,” in Bulletin de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris, 1 (1859-1860), 454-456; “Sur la perfectibilité des races,“ibid., 479-492; “Mémoire sur les négres,” in Mémoires de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris1 (1860-1863), 293-336; “Recherches sur Torigine de I’ancienne race egyptienne,” ibid., 399-134; “Parallele cranio-metrique des races humaines,” in Bulletin de la Societe d’anthropologie de Paris, 3 (1862), 238; “Sur le climat de Pgypte,” ibid, 4 (1863), 17-24; “De la chevelure comme caractéristique des races humaines, d’aprés des recherches microscopiques,” in Mémoires de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris, 2 (1863-1865), 1-36, trans. as “On Human Hair as a Race Character, Examined by the Aid of Microscope,” in Anthropological Review(London), 2 (1864), 1-23; “Resultats de crâniométrie,” in Mémoires de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris, 2 (1863-1865), 417-432; “Questions relatives à Panthropologie générale,” in Bulletin de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris, 5 (1864), 64-154; “Sur Porigine asiatique des européens,” ibid, , 223-242; “Importance de Panthropologie,” ibid., 6 (1865), 1-10, his inaugural lecture; “De 1’anthropologie en Espagne,” ibid., 361-370; “Sur la chevelure comme caracteristique des races humaines,” ibid., 376; and “L’homme et Panimal,” ibid., 522-562.

Other articles are “Os crâniens provenant des pala-fittes de la Suisse,” in Bulletin de la Société d’’anthropologie de Paris, 2nd ser., 1 (1866), 674-683; “Sur les caractères du crane basque,” ibid., 2 (1867), 10-18, 21-28; “Sur la langue euskuara, parlée par les basques,” ibid., 39-71; “Description sommaire de restes humains découverts dans les grottes de Cro Magnon, près de la station des Eyzies, arrondissement de Sarlat (Dordogne),“inAnnates des sciences natureiles (Zoologie), 5th ser., 10 (1868), 145-155; “Deuxième série d’observations microscopiques sur la chevelure,” in Mémoires de la Société d’anthropologic de Paris, 3 (1868), 77-97; and “Sur le transformisme,” in Bulletin de la Société d’anthropologie de Paris; 2nd ser., 4 (1869), 647-682.

II. Secondary Literature. See P. Broca, “Histoire des travaux de la Société d’anthropologie,” in Mémoires de la Société de anthropologic de Paris, 2 (1863-1865), xix; Archivio per Vanthropologia e la etnologia, 12 (1882), 120; V. Gietl, “Pruner Bey,” in Allgemeine Zeitung (1883), 339; N. Hirsch, “Pruner Bey,” in Allgemeine deutsche Biographic, XXVI (Leipzig, 1888), 675; P. Lhimosof, Livre d’or de la géographic. Essai de biographic-géographic (Paris, 1902), 181; A. Proust, obituary, in Bulletin de la Société de anthropologic de Paris, 3rd ser., 5 (1882), 547; A. Schäfer, “Leben und Wirken des Arztes Franz Pruner-Bey,” in Janus, 35 (1931), 248-277, 297-311, 335-343, 360-375; and 36 (1932), 59-70, 114-127; G. S., “Pruner Bey,” in Enciclopedia italiana di scienzi, letteri edarti, XIV (Rome, 1935), 4231, col. 1; and C. Voit, “Pruner Bey” in Sitzungmgsherichte der Baycrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München, 13 (1883), 241-246.

Denise Wrotnowska