ZIMMERMAN, JOH•NN GEORG, a native of the town of Brugg, in the Swiss canton •of Bern, in which his father was a senator, was b. Dec. 8, 1728. He was educated at home in the first instance, and afterward at Bern, preparatory to his going to the uni versity of Gottingen to study medicine. This he did in the year 1747. By his country man, the celebrated Haller, be was kindly welcomed; he became an inmate of his house, and had the advantage of his valuable aid in the prosecution of his studies. In these be displayed the utmost ardor, not content to confine himself to medicine, but aiming at a large and liberal culture. In his specialty, so great was the proficiency attained that on his taking his degree of doctor, in 1751, he published a work, entitled Dissertatio Physiologiea de Irritabilitate, which not only at the time attracted attention by its originality of view, but even now is held to be not without value. In 1752 be began to practice as a physician at Bern with every prospect of success; but shortly after, the post of public physician falling vacant in Brugg, his native place, he was induced to transfer himself thither. About this time he was married to a relation of his friend and Haller. Despite the extensive practice he speedily acquired, with such a repu tation for skill as brought patients from a great distance to consult him, he continued to cultivate other pursuits; and iu 1756 he published a miscellany of prose and verse, remarkable as containing the first sketch of his treatise On Solitude, which afterward became so famous. In 1758 appeared his work on National Pride, an ingenious and able dissertation, which immediately became popular and carried the name of the writer, by translation, into dearly every country in Europe. That he did not, however, neglect his special department of study was proved in 1763 by the appearance of an elaborate, work on experience in medicine (Von der Erfahrung in der Arzeneilcunst ; Zurich, 2 vols. 8vo). Of this the great value was instantly recognized, and it still continues to enjoy some portion of its first reputation. Zimmerman was now a man of European note; and among other advantageous offers made to him was that of the post of physician to the King of Britain at Hanover, with the title of aulic councilor attached to it. This he accepted; and to Hanover he accordingly went in 1768. His repute as a physician con tinued here to increase, and from all quarters came flocks of people to have the benefit of his advice. In 1770 he had the misfortune to lose his wife, and this distress was corn plicated by an attack of an internal malady, which soon after obliged him to go to Berlin to undergo a perilous operation. This was successfully performed, but did not preclude
.a return of the complaint some time after. His only daughter now died; and a son who :survived sunk under the influence of disease into something like entire idiocy. Zimmer man, who had almost from his very boyhood had to struggle against a constitutional melancholy, became now, as it almost seemed, a confirmed and hopeless hypochondriac. From this deplorable state he was rescued for a time by a second marriage, into which his persuaded him; and as fruit of his revived interest in life he gave to the world, in 1784, his celebrated work On Solitude (Reber die Eznsanikeit ; Leipsic, 4 vols. 8vo), a hook which speedily became a popular favorite throughout Europe. In 1786 he was invited by Frederick the great, then in his last illness, to attend him at Potsdam. On going thither, he found that the case of the king was beyond the reach of his art. He remained, however, for some time; and as the result of his sojourn, he published in 1788 and 1790 two works on Frederick the great, the manifold indiscretions contained in which involved him in much 'painful and acrimonious controversy. In excuse of much in the books not easily to be defended, everything seems to show that they were merely the first indications of a return of his constitutional malady in an aggravated. and, as it proved, a finally intractable and hopeless form. His melancholy hallucina-. tions continued to grow upon him, till he was at length little better than a mere maniac; and on Oct. 7, 1795, he died at Hanover. During these last sad years he had continued at intervals to write and publish; but iu everything thus produced there was evident the wreck of his once brilliant faculties. As a physician, a philosopher, a man of general accomplishment, and a writer of singular power and felicity, Zimmerman was unques tionably one of the most remarkable figures of his time. Of Zimmerman on Solitude every one must needs have heard: it no longer retains the immense popularity it once had;. but along with his more expressly medical treatises, which are of interest—if not very much now otherwise—in relation to the history and development of his profession. it must still continuo for a time to perpetuate the name of its writer.—See Zimmerman's Eigene Lebensbeschreibung (Autobiography, Han. 1791); Tissot, Vie de Zimmerman (1797); Wichmann, Zimmerman's dirankengeschichte (17S6); Bode m anti, J. G. Z. (1878).