[Frans Johan Rabbe: the father of the history of medicine in Finland]

F. J. Rabbe is the one who can be regarded as the real father of the history of medicine in Finland and who also was a member of the Medical Board. It was Rabbe who already in 1843 wrote the first paper on the history of different types of hospitals such as the leper hospitals, the county hospitals, the hospitals for veneral diseases as well as the military and psychiatric hospitals which gradually had been established in Finland since the middle of the 14th century. Rabbe also collected and published all the medical laws and decrees issued in Finland between 1683 and 1845. Later Rabbe published a lot of different statistical material on medical conditions in Finland as well as biographies of medical doctors. He also made a comprehensive work on the history of medicine in Finland, about 3000 handwritten pages, which unfortunately only has been saved as a manuscript and has not been published(5).