HOFFMANN, Frederick, a celebrated physician of the University of Halle in Saxony, was born in that city in 1660. He received his early education in his native town, and made great progress in the mathematics, to which he partly ascribed the success which followed his medical studies. At the age of fifteen he lost both his father and his mother during the prevalence of an epidemical distemper. In 1680 he established himself at Erfurt, there to study chemistry under Gaspar Cramer; and the following year he received the degree of doctor of physic at Jena. In 1682 he published an essay De Cinnabari Antimonii, which was reprinted at Leyden in 1685, 12mo, and laid the foundation of his reputation as an able chemist, which he afterwards increased by professing chemistry in the schools of Jena. It is to him we are indebted for the preparation known by the name of the Anodyne Liquor of Hoffmann, which is considered still as a useful sedative. Frederick III., Elector of Brandenburg, having founded the university of Halle in 1693, Hoffmann was appointed primarius professor, and alone prepared the statutes of the faculty of medicine. His fame soon spread throughout all Germany, and thence into foreign parts; and several learned bodies, including the academies of Berlin and Petersburg, and the Royal Society of London, enrolled him among their members. During his residence at Halle he divided his time between instruction, practice, and study; but more than once he interrupted his pursuits by visits to the different courts of Germany where his professional successes procured him honours, titles, and rewards. He was solicited by the king of Prussia to fix his residence at Berlin; but he preferred remaining in his native country, where he died on the 12th of November 1742. At the age of sixty Hoffmann undertook his great work entitled Medicina Rationalis Systematica, Halle, 1730, in 9 vols. 4to, of which Bruhier d'Ablaincourt has given a translation, under the title of Médecine Raisonnée d'Hoff-
m, 1739, in 9 vols. 12mo. The same physician has also translated from the Latin of Hoffmann a Treatise on Fevers, Paris, 1746, in 3 vols. 12mo; the Politics of Medicine, ibid., 1751, in 12mo; and Observations on the Cure of Gout and Rheumatism. A complete edition of his works has been published, with a life of the author, under the title of Hoffmanni Opera omnia Medico-physica cum Supplementis, Geneva, 1740, 1755, 11 parts, in folio. The writings of Hoffmann contain a great mass of practical matter of considerable value, partly compiled from preceding writers, and partly the result of his own observation; but they are also deformed by trifling remarks, hypothetical conjectures, and frequent prolixity and repetition in the details. As a theorist, his suggestions proved of great importance, and contributed to introduce that revolution in the science of medicine which subsequent observation has extended and confirmed. His doctrine of atony and spasm in the living solid, according to which all internal disorders were referred to some preternatural affection of the nervous system, rather than to the morbid derangements of the fluids, first turned the attention of physicians from the mere mechanical and chemical operations of the body, to those of the primary moving powers of the living system. Hoffmann pursued with considerable ardour the study of practical chemistry, and improved the department of pharmacy by the addition of some mineral preparations. But, upon the whole, his practice was cautious, especially in his latter years; and he trusted much to vegetable simples. "I affirm solemnly," said he, "that, though in my youth I ran much after chemical remedies, yet in my age I became convinced that very few remedies, well selected, and derived from substances in appearance the most worthless, afford more prompt and efficacious relief to the sick than the rarest and most elaborate chemical preparations." (J. B.—E.)