GEORGE ERNEST, an eminent German chemist, was born in Franconia in 1665, and chosen professor of medicine at Hall, when a university was founded in that city in 1694. The excellency of his lectures while he filled that chair, the importance of his various publications, and his extensive practice, soon raised his reputation to a very great height. He received an invitation to Berlin in 1716, which having accepted, he was made counsellor of state and physician to the king. He died in 1734, in the 75th year of his age. Stahl is without doubt one of the greatest men of which the annals of medicine can boast; his name marks the commencement of a new and more illustrious era in chemistry. He was the author of the doctrine of phlogiston, which, though now completely overturned by the discoveries of Lavoisier and others, was not without its use; as it served to combine the scattered fragments of former chemists into a system, and as it gave rise to more accurate experiments and a more scientific view of the subject, to which many of the subsequent discoveries were owing. This theory maintained its ground for more than half a century, and was received and supported by some of the most eminent men which Europe has produced; a sufficient proof of the ingenuity and the abilities of its author. He was the author also of A Theory of Medicine, founded upon the notions which he entertained of the absolute dominion of mind over body; in consequence of which, he affirmed, that every muscular action is a voluntary act of the mind, whether attended with consciousness or not. This theory he and his followers carried a great deal too far, but the advices at least which he gives to attend to the state of the mind of the patient are worthy of the attention of physicians.

His principal works are, 1. Experimenta et Observationes Chymicae et Phylaceae, Berlin, 1731, 8vo. 2. Dissertations Medicinae, Hall, 2 vols 4to. This is a collection of theses. 3. Theoria Medica vera, 1737, 4to. 4. Opusculum Chymico-phylaceum, 1740, 4to. 5. A Treatise on Sulphur, both Inflammable and Fixed, written in German. 6. Negotium Otiolium, Hall, 1720, 4to. It is in this treatise chiefly that he establishes his system concerning the action of the soul upon the body. 7. Fundamenta Chymicae Dogmatiae et Experimentalis, Nuremberg, 1747, 3 vols 4to. 8. A treatise on Salts, written in German. 9. Commentarium in Metallurgiam Becheri, 1723.