Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica/Ackermann (John Christian Gottlieb)

by Alexander Henderson

ACKERMANN, (John Christian Gottlieb), a very learned physician and professor of medicine, was born at Zeulenrode in Upper Saxony, in the year 1756. Having acquired the rudiments of his medical education under the tuition of his father, who was also a physician, he proceeded to Jena and to Gottingen, and studied under Baldinger and Heyne. On quitting the latter university, he established himself in practice at Stendal, the numerous manufactories of which place enabled him to contribute many important observations to the translation of Rammazzini’s Treatise of the Diseases of Artificers, which he published in 1780-83. After practising here several years, he was appointed public Professor in ordinary of medicine, in the university of Altorf in Franconia, which office he continued to fill with great repute to the time of his death, which took place in 1801. All Dr Ackermann’s works display great erudition. To the history of medicine he contributed many valuable articles; the disquisitions, in particular, on the lives and writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Aretæus, and Rufus Ephesius, which he furnished to Harles’s edition of Fabricius’ Bibliothæca Græca, are justly esteemed as masterpieces of critical research. As a practitioner he appears to have possessed no mean talents for observation; though he has been accused, and, it must be acknowledged, not without reason, of betraying occasionally a predilection for antiquated hypotheses. Besides various translations of English, French, and Italian medical authors, which were published, for the most part, previously to his removal to Altorf, the following works have appeared under his name:—1. De Trismo, Commentatio Medico. 8vo, 1775.—2. De Dysenteriæ Antiquitatibus liber bipartitus. 8vo, 1777.—3. Ueber die Krankheiten der Gelehrten. 8vo, 1777.—4. The Life of John Conrad Dippel, in German. 8vo, 1781.—5. Parabilium Medicamentorum Scriptores Antiqui: Sexti Placiti Papyriensis de Medicamentis ex Animalibus; Lucii Apulei de Medicamentis ex Herbis, cum Notis. 8vo, 1788.—6. H. D. Gaubii Institutiones Pathologiæ Medicæ, cum Additamentis, J. C. G. A. 8vo, 1787.—7. Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, c. Studii Medici Salernitani Historia Præmissa. 8vo, 1790.—8. Institutiones Historiæ Medicinæ. 8vo, 1792.—9. Institutiones Therapiæ Generalis. 2 tom. 8vo, 1793-95.—10. Handbuch der Kriegsarzneykunde. 2 tom. 8vo, 1795.—11. Opuscula ad Historiam Medicinæ pertinentia. 8vo, 1797.—12. Bemerkungen über die Kentniss und Kur einiger Krankheiten. 8vo, 1794-1800.—13. Pathologische-Praktische Abhandlung über die Blähungen, für Aertze und Kranke bestimmt. 8vo, 1800.(E.)