Antonius Mathijsen

Antonius Mathijsen was born November 4, 1805, to a village physician in Budel, a Dutch town on the Belgian border.

While working in Haarlem at the military hospital in 1851, Mathijsen first used plaster of Paris as a bandage.

[1] Across the street he watched workers repairing cracks in the church with strips of jute dunked in plaster of Paris.

He reasoned that a jute bandage soaked in water and plaster of Paris applied in the same way as the Belgian method would harden within a few minutes and thus made a better fixation for broken bones.

[1] After testing his idea on chickens he published his findings in a Dutch medical magazine Repertorium in February 1852.