Johan Hendrik Christiaan Basting

Johan Hendrik Christiaan Basting (20 September 1817 – 24 September 1870) was a Dutch army surgeon and friend of Red Cross founder Henri Dunant. He played an important role during the establishment in 1863 of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and from that year on he was an advocate for the establishment of a national voluntary aid organization in the Netherlands, the Netherlands Red Cross established in 1867. Biography Youth, early career, and marriage Basting was born in Enkhuizen on 20 September 1817, the son of hospital master Dingeman Cornelis Basting and Frederika Sophia Wilhelmina Schneider. He was 17 years old when he was admitted as a student at the National Institute for Military Medicine in Utrecht. In 1839 he became army physician Class 3. In 1844 Basting was placed in Breda , where he became Officer of Health Class 2. After a short interim period in Maastricht, he was transferred to Gorinchem. In 1853 he was promoted to Officer of Health Class 1 and transferred to Leiden. The following year he married in Gorinchem with Amalie Fréderique Kattenbusch, born in Eschweiler. He received his PhD in Leiden on 12 March 1855. In the same year he was transferred from Leiden to the Regiment Grenadiers and Jagers in The Hague where he would stay until 1870, with a short break due to an interim transfer to Bergen op Zoom First contact with Henri Dunant A certain Pauline Micheli-Revilliod advised Henri Dunant in 1862 to send Johan Basting a copy of his book Un Souvenir de Solferino. Dunant had written it after having witnessed the suffering at the Battle of Solferino. He then asked Basting to translate the book from French to Dutch. Basting did so, and became fascinated by the Dunant's plea in his book to set up voluntary organizations in all countries that could become lifesaving in the case of armed conflict. The Dutch translation of Dunant's book appeared in Dutch in 1863