[Mining medicine in the 18th century. On the 250th anniversary of the birthday of Ignaz von Born (1742-1791)].

Ignaz von Born (1742-1791) improved several technical and methodical approaches to mining and was thus instrumental in creating the prerequisites for reducing certain professional miner's diseases. Among these diseases, lead or saturnine poisoning (colica saturnina) caused by lead monoxide PbO, also known as litharge, was much dreaded (a 17th-century physician from Goslar wrote a treatise on "Lithargyrii fumo noxio morbifico, vulgo dicto 'pit cat'"); a miner's disease associated with phthisis and pareses of a then unknown etiology; and in some cases even with hookworm disease that was much later recognised as yet another professional disease of miners. During this era a new professional image of a mining engineering physician developed, with several of these doctors trying to go beyond merely curative measures: they aimed at achieving meaningful prevention that involved standard measures and behavioural patterns on the one hand and improvements in the professional mining procedure on the other.