Daniel de Superville

Who was Daniel de Superville?

Daniel de Superville was a Dutch physician who in 1742 founded the University of Erlangen in Germany. He served as chancellor of the university until 1748. De Superville also wrote several treatises on anatomy.

Daniel de Superville came from a family of French Huguenots who had fled to the Netherlands from Saumur. He was the third son of merchant Jacques de Superville and Marguérite Vettekeuken. His uncle was the well-known Calvinist theologian Daniel de Superville.

He enrolled at the University of Leiden in 1719, having already gained his doctorate a year earlier at the University of Utrecht with a dissertation entitled Dissertatio de sanguine et sanguificatione. In 1722 he married Catharina Elisabeth le Comte in Leiden, and on June 21 of that year, the couple left for Prussia, where de Superville found employment as a lecturer of anatomy and surgery in Stettin.

After managing to cure King Frederick II of Prussia of edema, Daniel de Superville in 1738 secured a position as the personal physician of Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia, sister of Frederick II.