Johann Bachstrom

Jan Fryderyk or Johann Friedrich Bachstrom (24 December 1688, near Rawitsch, now Rawicz, Poland - June 1742, Nieswiez, now Nyasvizh, Belarus) was a writer, scientist and Lutheran theologian who spent the last decade of his life in Leiden.

He mostly wrote in Latin, German, and French (with his given names adjusted to Joannis Friderici and Jean-Frédéric as appropriate), while in English biographies he can appear as John Frederic Bachstrom.

He moved to Wengrow, then a centre for Reformation movements in Poland, where he combined the offices of physician and pastor.

For example, he promoted that women should be allowed to become medical doctors and that sailors should be taught to swim before taking off to sea.

[5] At the urging of Jesuits, presumably for his liberal opinions on religion, he was imprisoned and killed (by strangulation) in Nieswiez in Poland–Lithuania (now Belarus) in 1742.

In Observationes circa scorbutum ("Observations on Scurvy"), Bachstrom wrote that scurvy is solely owing to a total abstinence from fresh vegetable food, and greens; which is alone the primary cause of the disease.