Henri-Joseph Rega

Henri-Joseph Rega (1690–1754) was a professor of medicine and rector of Leuven University, in the Habsburg Netherlands, where he established a botanical garden, laboratories for chemistry and physics, and an anatomical theatre, as well as adding a new wing to the University Hall (originally Leuven's medieval cloth hall).

[5] Rega treated numerous wealthy patients in private practice, including Archduchess Maria Elisabeth of Austria, Governess-General of the Austrian Netherlands, who became a generous patron to him and gave him a gem-encrusted medal bearing her likeness.

The former is now the site of a 19th-century country house, Regahof,[6] and the latter (at Parijsstraat 74 in Leuven) is a listed building known as "Hotel Rega".

[7] In 1745, in Brussels, Rega treated Maurice de Saxe, the leader of an invading French army during the War of the Austrian Succession.

In 1752, the then-governor, Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, decreed that the bodies of executed criminals be transferred to the Faculty of Medicine in Leuven for dissection in Rega's anatomical theatre.