John Jonston

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Jan Jonston

John Jonston (?-1673) was a Polish scholar and practicing medical doctor of Scottish descent, closely connected to the Polish magnate Leszczyński's family.

Born in Poznań, son of Simon Johnston, who emigrated with two brothers from Scotland to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In his education he was first sponsored by his paternal uncle, later, he worked as a private tutor or medical doctor.

From 1611 he attended the school of Bohemian Brothers in Ostroróg, then the Schoenaichianum in Bytom and from 1619 the gymnasium at Toruń in Prussia. As a Calvinist he couldn't attend the Catholic-controlled Jagiellonian University, thus he got his first degree at the University of St Andrews (1622- 1625; M.A. 1623), where he studied theology, scholastic philosophy, and Hebrew; among his sponsors was the primate John Spotswood.

In 1625 he returned to Poland and until 1628 he took the position of a tutor in the house of the Kurtzbach-Zawadski family in Leszno, where he was an active member of the community of Czech Brethren. In that period he published Enchiridion historiae naturalis in the period 1625-8. (Translated into English, 1657.)

In 1628 he travelled to Holy Roman Empire (Wittenberg, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Franeker). He studied at University of Cambridge (botany and medicine); Frankfurt, Franeker and Leiden (matriculated 1630).

In 1630 he returned to Poland and becomes a tutor of Bogusław Leszczyński in the house of Rafał Leszczyński, voivode of Bielsk. He chose this appointment in preference to the chair of philosophy at Deventer, which was offered to him at the same time.

In 1632 he travelled with Bogusław Leszczyński and sons of other Polish magnates to various universities abroad. Their first stop was Franeker (1632), then Leiden. In 1632 Jonston published Thautomatographia naturalis in Amsterdam. In 1634, they went to England. He received an M.D. from Leiden in 1634, and the same degree ad eundem from Cambridge later that year. That year he also received a Ph.D. in Leiden and Cambridge, on basis of his disseretation De febribus. After this they toured around Europe until news of Rafał Leszczynki's death summoned them home in 1636. Jonston settled in Leszno and remained in the service of the Leszczyńcy's as "Archiater et Civitatis Lesnensis Physicus Ordinarius."

In 1642 his Idea universae medicinae practicae was published in Amsterdam (English translation in 1652; various Latin editions after 1644).

He was an active pedagogue at the Leszno academy, which was under the direction of his friend Comenius. He turned down the offer of the chair in medicine at Frankfurt in 1642. He also turned down offers from Heidelberg and Leiden. He was well enough to do that he purchased an estate at Ziebenburg in 1652.

In 1665, the circumstances of the Polish-Swedish war (The Deluge), which caused much persecution of the Protestants in Poland, forced him to move to an estate at Ziebendorff near Legnica which he had inherited a few years before. He remained here for the rest of his life.

He died in Legnica.