Johann Christian Gottlieb Ackermann

Johann Christian Gottlieb Ackermann was a German medical doctor and historian of medicine, born at Zeulenroda in Upper Saxony in 1756 and died of tuberculosis in 1801 at the age of forty-five. The son of a physician, he entered the University of Jena at fifteen, studied under Ernst Gottfried Baldinger and followed him to Göttingen, where he also studied the classical sciences. He became a private lecturer at Halle in 1775, then returned to Zeulenroda to practise medicine. In 1786 he was called to Altdorf as professor of chemistry, and in 1794 he became chair of applied medicine and head of the local hospital for the poor. His scholarly work centred on the history of medicine in the Middle Ages, and he collected rare medical writings and translated foreign works into German. His books include Institutiones Historiae Medicinae of 1792.