Art of Prolonging Life

THE &quote;Art of Prolonging Life,&quote; by Christopher William Hufeland, a philosophic physician and professor of medicine in the University of Jena, is a work enjoying a deserved popularity in Germany, where it has gone through several editions...The translation bears the impress of a master's hand; it is elegant and exact, and in the Editor's judgment is the production of the learned author's own pen. Under this belief, the Editor has selected the translation of 1794, with its pure and classic language, for the present volume, in preference to a new translation from a later German edition.The Reader will probably be struck, as was the Editor, with the little real progress which has been made in the science of living during the more than half a century since the original work was first written; and the feeling of a necessity for bringing the matter up to the present line of march will be dissipated by its perusal. Indeed it seemed to the Editor more fitting as a ground of wholesome reflection, that we should have placed before our eyes the philosophy of half a century back, that we might thereby learn how much still remained to be done, before our knowledge of the subject could be regarded as complete.&quote;Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762-1836) was one of the most distinguished German physicians of his time. He graduated in 1780 and became Professor of Medicine in Jena (Thuringia) in 1793. He was an early advocate of Jennerian vaccination, advocated medicine for the poor, while opposing the Brunonian medical philosophy and animal magnetism. He became Professor of Medicine in Berlin in 1801, and then Professor of Pathology and Therapeutics at the new University of Berlin in 1810. He was a voluminous medical author on numerous topics including pediatrics, balneology, the epidemiology of typhus and cholera, and medical ethics.&quote;-Pitt.edu