J. F. C. Hecker

Justus Friedrich Carl Hecker (1795–1850) was a German physician and medical historian, professor at the University of Berlin. He is regarded as one of the founders of the historical study of disease, treating epidemics as events that shaped and were shaped by society, belief and behavior. His studies of the Black Death (1832), the dancing mania of the Middle Ages and the English sweating sickness were translated into English by Benjamin Guy Babington and published together as The Epidemics of the Middle Ages. He also wrote a general history of medicine. His father, August Friedrich Hecker, was also a physician and medical writer.