Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica/Amman (Paul)
AMMAN (Paul), a Physician and Botanist, was born at Breslau in 1634. In 1662, he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Leipsic, and, in 1664, was admitted a member of the Society Naturæ Curiosorum, under the name of Dryander. Shortly afterwards, he was chosen Extraordinary Professor of Medicine in the above-mentioned University; and, in 1674, he was promoted to the Botanical Chair, which he again, in 1682, exchanged for the Physiological. He died in 1691. Paul Amman seems to have been a man of an acute mind, and extensive learning; but a restless and irritable disposition led him to engage too much in controversy, and to indulge in a degree of raillery in his writings, which the nature of the subjects hardly warranted. By his first work, which was published in 1670, under the title, Medicina Critica, seu Centuria Casuum in Facultate Lipsiensi resolutorum variis discursibus aucta, he drew down upon himself the displeasure of the Faculty, who had certainly no cause to rejoice at this exposure of their decisions. In the Paracænesis ad discentes circa institutionum medicarum emendationem occupata, which appeared three years afterwards, and in the Irenicum Numæ Pompilii cum Hippocrate, which he published in 1689, he showed his independent turn of thinking, by boldly attacking the systems of Galen and Hippocrates, and the abuses to which the implicit adoption of them had given rise. But it is chiefly on his botanical writings that his fame ought to rest. The Suppellex Botanica, et Manuductio ad Materiam Medicam, which he committed to the press in 1675, contains a full, but somewhat prolix, catalogue of the plants of the botanic garden of Leipsic and its environs, with their synonyms; followed by a brief introduction to the study of the Materia Medica, which proves an accurate knowledge of the science he was then employed in teaching. His next publication was entitled, Character Plantarum Naturalis, ab ultimo fine, viz. fructificatione desumptus, et in gratiam philatrorum per canones et exempla digestus; to the second edition of which, in 1685, he prefixed a dissertation on the true classification of plants. In this work he adopted the arrangement of Morison, endeavouring to show, as the title imports, that the genera of plants were only to be distinguished by their parts of fructification, and illustrating his method by the description of 1476 different genera and species, in alphabetical order. An enlarged edition of this book was published by Daniel Nebel, in 1700, with the addition of the characters of Tournefort and Hermann. For the complete list of Paul Amman’s writings, see Haller, Bibl. Med. and Eloy, Dict. Hist. (E.)