Franz Tappeiner


Franz Tappeiner, Edler von Tappein was an Austrian physician and anthropologist. He was the father of pharmacologist Hermann von Tappeiner.
He studied at the universities of Prague, Padua and Vienna, and afterwards opened a medical practice in his hometown of Laas. Later on, he became a spa physician in Meran, about which, he advocated fresh-air therapy for tuberculosis patients and water treatments for sufferers of typhus.
As an anthropologist, he is best known for his studies of the inhabitants of Tyrol. During his career he amassed an impressive collection of skulls that he left to the Vienna Museum of Natural History and to the Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck.
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The Tappeinerweg, a popular 4 km trail in the city of Merano is named after him, as is the "Franz Tappeiner Hospital", also located in Merano.

Selected works