[A physician's everyday life in the Engadin around the year 1700]

Jachiam Elias Frizzun (1657-1714), a barber-surgeon who practised in his native mountain village of Celerina (Grisons, Switzerland) from 1693 to 1713, has left a case-book written in Rhaeto-Romanic and covering the whole period of his professional activity. This unique source shows, among other things, that this village surgeon treated both medical and surgical conditions, though obstetrics was obviously the exclusive domain of the midwife. In chronic disease leading to death Frizzun was not called for, and only exceptionally did he attend smallpox patients. Some characteristic case histories are quoted in German translation. Frizzun's case-book was at the same time an account-book. The entries prompt the conclusion that he and his family depended for their living on his medical practice and on agiculture, while his barber's trade was of minor economic importance. Furthermore, at least half of the accounts were not settled in cash but by supply of goods or work.