[The oculist Joseph Hillmer in Berlin 1748-1768].

We know quite a lot about the life of the oculist Joseph Hillmer of Vienna between 1746-1775, especially from newspapers of that time. In 1748, Frederic II of Prussia appointed him to a professorship at the Berlin Collegium Medico-Chirurgicum, where his duties were to lecture on ophthalmiatrics twice a week. In 1751 he travelled via Livonia and Estonia to St. Petersburg. After 4 months he was denounced as a charlatan. The First Physician at the court of the Tsarina Elisabeth, Herman Kaau Boerhaave, acting in his capacity as director of the Medical Chancelry at Petersburg (the Russian medical supervising board), had Hillmer expelled from the Russian empire. He also collected all the documents relating to the affair and published them as a book at his expense. The Tsarina suppressed the book, which contained case reports on 125 of Hillmer's patients. There is much to indicate that she was motivated by tactical diplomacy, since the oculist had been involved in such matters by the Prussian king during the preliminaries to the Third Silestan War (1756-1763). Hillmer never held a single lecture during his period of tenure as a professor in Berlin, and there is very little evidence of his ever having practised there. Nonetheless, he had owned a large house near the Berlin castle which he also extended to allow its use for public concerts and festivities. During the summer he let the house while traveling extensively throughout Europe and attending patients in many different places, so that he lived in the house only in winter. After his return from Russia he sold his horses and, later, also his coach.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)