HOFFMANN, FRIEDRICH, one of the most celebrated physicians of the last century, was born at Halle in 1660, and died in that city in 1742. At the age of 13 lie lost Ills parents, who died from typhus ,fever,and very shortly afterwards became deprived by a fire of the small Patrittiony that detolved to him. Undismayed, hOtever, by these misfortunes, he repaired in 1678 to Jena, to study medicine, and from thence proceeded to Erfurt, to become a pupil of the distinguished chemist Gaspard Cramer. He com menced practice at Minden in Westphalia, where he had influential connections, and where, in a very short time he acquired a high reputation. After a residence of little more than two years in Minden, during which time he visited Holland and England, he removed to Halberstadt. In 1693 Frederick, elector of Brandenburg, afterwards king of Prussia, appointed Hoffmann to the professorship of medicine in the newly consti tuted university of Halle. It was on his recommendation that the celebrated Stahl (q.v.), who had been his fellow-student at Jena, and subsequently became his great rival, was appointed one of his colleagues. At the urgent request of the king, he subsequently removed to Berlin, where he remained for three years; but finding that he could not pursue his studies in the atmosphere of the court, he returned to Halle; and although he subsequently attended the king at Berlin during a long illness, Halle was his resi dence during the remainder of his life. As a physician and a medical teacher, Hoffmann
enjoyed a celebrity second only to Boerhaave, who contemporaneously occupied the chair of medicine at Leyden. It is unnecessary here to enter into his special doctrines, which are now of little practical value. Haller asserts that he amassed a large fortune by the sale of secret remedies, one of which is still designated Hoffmann's Anodyne Liquor (q. v.). Of his numerous works, the greatest is his Medicina Rationalis Systematica (Halle, 1718-40, 0 cols, 4to), which occupied him for more than twenty years, and was concluded in his eightieth year. His complete works have gone through various editions. His Opera Oozing Physico-medica Denuo Rerisa, Correeta et Aucta, were printed at Geneva in 1640, in six folio volumes, and were reprinted after his death with five supplementary colonies of previously unpublished Opuscula. These were reprinted at Venice in 1745, in 17 volumes 4to, and twice subsequently at Naples on a still larger scale.