(1718 - 1792)

Casimir Christoph Schmiedel was born in Bayreuth, Germany in 1718, the son of a Brandenburg financial councilor and Physician Ordinary to the Margrave of Bayreuth. He enrolled at the University of Jena to study medicine in 1735, and received his M.D. degree in 1742. He was then appointed Professor of Pharmacology at the recently established Friedrichs Academy in Bayreuth, and simultaneously opened his private medical practice there. In 1744 Schmiedel was promoted to Professor of Medicine; he lectured on physiology, anatomy, surgery, pathology and forensic medicine, while also developing an interest in mineralogy. Unfortunately he failed to get along with his colleagues at the Friedrichs Academy, and consequently in 1763 he resigned his professorship there and moved to Ansbach where he took the position of Physician Ordinary to Margrave Carl Alexander; he was also appointed Privy Councillor and Head of the Board of Health. Schmiedel died in Ansbach in 1792, having been plagued with mental problems during his last years.

Schmiedel's interests as a naturalist focused on mineralogy, ore mineralogy in particular, and in 1753 he began issuing parts of a book designed to help miners and prospectors recognize the different kinds of metalliferous ore minerals. Erz Stuffen und Berg Arten ("Ore Specimens and Mineral Species of the Mines") consisted of descriptive text written by Schmiedel, complemented by an eventual total of 46 hand-colored copper-plate engravings of mineral specimens. The engravings were nearly all done by the Nuremberg engraver Johann Michael Seligmann (1720-1762). Seligmann had received his training in art at the Nürnberg Malerakademie, and in his short lifetime created illustrations for many books on science and natural history. Several artists produced the original paintings from which Seligmann executing his engravings; these included J. F. Kiefhaber, N. Gabler, J. C. Keller, J. C. Dietzsch and Christian Leinbarger, with engraving assistance from Johann Sebastian Leitner and Johann Christoph von Mayr. The last plates were issued sometime after 1771.

W.E.W.

Reference:
Schuh, C. (2005) Mineralogy & Crystallography: An Annotated Bibliography of Books Published 1469 through 1919. Privately published, Tucson, 1203 pages.