Christian Wilhelm Hufeland is one of the most prolific of medical writers. Having studied medicine at Jena and at Gottingen he took the degree of doctor in 1783. At Jena he occupied a professorial chair (1793), and came to Berlin five years later, where he was entrusted with the superintendence of the Medical College. Both as practical physician and as professor, Hufeland attained a European reputation. The French Academy of Sciences elected him one of its members. His numerous writings have been often reprinted in Germany. Among the most useful are: (1) _Popular Dissertations upon Health_ (Leipsig, 1794); (2) _Makrobiotik: oder die Kunst das Menschliche Leben zu Verlängern_ (Jena, 1796), a celebrated work which has been translated into all the languages of Europe[203]; (3) _Good Advice to Mothers upon the most Important Points of the Physical Education of Children in the First Years_ (Berlin, 1799); (4) _History of Health, and Physical Characteristics of our Epoch_ (Berlin, 1812)[204]. Of Hufeland’s witness to the general superiority of the _Naturgemässe Lebensweise_ the following sentences are sufficiently representative: “The more man follows Nature and obeys her laws the longer will he live. The further he removes from them (_je weiter er von ihnen abweicht_) the shorter will be his duration of existence.... Only inartificial, simple nourishment promotes health and long life, while mixed and rich foods but shorten our existence.... We frequently find a very advanced old age amongst men who from youth upwards have lived, for the most part, upon the vegetable diet, and, perhaps, have never tasted flesh.”[205] XXXV. RITSON. 1761-1830. Known to the world generally as an eminent antiquarian and, in particular, as one of the earliest and most acute investigators of the sources of English romantic poetry, for future times his best and enduring fame will rest upon his at present almost forgotten Moral Essay upon Abstinence--one of the most able and philosophical of the ethical expositions of anti-kreophagy ever published.