Thread by @raphink

Tonight for #ancestryhour, let me tell you about my fourth great-uncle, Léopold Wertheim. Born Löb Wertheimer, he was born on the 13th of October 1808 in Fürth, Bavaria. His father Isaac Joseph Wertheimer was a glass maker and probably worked with the mirror factory. 1/10

Léopold's mother, Elisabeth Baruch (or Horschitz in some documents) gave birth to 12 more siblings: Frummet, Cecilia (my 3rd great-grandmother), Ernst, Salomon, Esther, Gütel, Wolf, Hirsch, Sulamith, Gnendel, Franziska and Karoline. 2/10

Léopold studies medicine at the faculty of Munich, and finds interest in Preissnitz' hydrotherapy. He migrates to France in the end of the 1830s and requests the authorization to practice medicine there books.google.ch/books?id=iANTA… 3/10

The Royal Academy of Medicine studies the report he and Dr Engel made on hydrotherapy and conclude that their theory is not scientifically founded and potentially dangerous. They reject hydrotherapy as being of the same nature and school as homœpathy and magnetism. 4/10

Wertheim stays in France and makes himself quite useful during the cholera epidemy in Paris in 1849. This later results in a Legion of Honor medal in 1865, as well as the authorization to practice medicine in France in 1853. 5/10

Wertheim conducts several hydrotherapeutic experiments at the St-Louis Hospital in Paris. While he considers them conclusive, the Academy is far from convinced of the efficiency of his methods. In 1852, he founds a center of hydrotherapy in the Château d'Issy, near Paris. 6/10

Léopold is allowed to fix his residence in France in 1867. The Château d'Issey burns during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 and is never rebuilt. During that war, Wertheim finds refuge in Vienna with one of his brothers, who is a banker. 7/10

On the 6th of August 1874, Léopold Wertheim receives the French citizenship. In his old age, he likes to visit his great nephews, as related by my great-grandfather Léon Grunberg, who will later found an engineering company selling, among other things, hydrotherapy material. 8/10

Léopold Wertheim dies on the 29th of March 1890, at the age of 81 years, in his home in Paris. He never married, and is burried in the Jewish section of the Montmartre cemetery, along with the family of his nephew Louis Rau. en.geneanet.org/gallery/?actio… 9/10

Years later, the medical practices that emerged from hydrotherapy —balneotherapy, thalassotherapy, etc.­— have become quite common in France, but Léopold Wertheim's role in its introduction in France 200 years ago has been largely forgotten. #ancestryhour 10/10

I still haven't figured out which brother it was. Is welcome hints to identify this banker in 19th century Vienna.

And I plan on updating a few Wikipedia articles on that subject to fix these historical lacks