Cohausen, John Henry

, a learned and ingenious physician, was born at Hildesheim, in Lower Saxony, towards the end of the seventeenth century. Being educated to the practice of medicine, after taking the degree of doctor, he went to M.unster, where he soon distinguished himself by his superior skill and abilities. His works, which are numerous, bear ample testimony to the vigour of his intellects, and of his application to letters. His last work, “If ermippus Redivivus,” in which he professes to shew the practicability of prolonging the lives of elderly persons to 115 years, by receiving the breath and transpirations of healthy young females, was written, or first published, when he was in his seventy-seventh year. This was translated into English, and published, with additions and improvements, by the late Dr. John Campbell, under the title of “Hermippus liedivivus, or the Sage’s triumph over old Age and the Grave.” A vein of humour runs through this, and indeed through most of the productions of this writer, which gave them great popularity when first published, though they are now little noticed, excepting, perhaps, the work ju$t mentioned, in which the irony is extremely delicate; in his rhapsody against the prevailing passion of taking snuff, he affects to consider a passion for taking snuff as a disease of the nostrils, similar to that affecting the stomach of girls in chlorosis, and therefore calls it the pica nasi. The title of this production is, “Dissertatio satyrica, physico-medico-moralis, de Pica Nasi sive Tabaci sternutatorii moderno abusu, et noxa,” Amstelodami, 1716, 12mo.

Ruysch, in the latter part of his life, imagined he had discovered a muscle at the ftindus uteri, to which he delegated the office of expelling the placenta, and to which he thought the performance of that duty might be left. This our author has ridiculed in a little volume, to which he gave the title of “Lucina Ruyschiana, sive musculus | uteri orbicularis a clarissimo D. D. Ruyschio delectus,” published at Amsterdam, 1731. He published, the preceding year, “Archaeus faber febrium et medicus,” and in 1716, “Neothea,” written to shew the folly of sending to China for tea, when we have so many herbs at hand, as pleasant, and more healthy; but his wit was not powerful enough to make either the use of tea or tobacco unfashionable. For the titles of others of his works, see Boerhaave’s Methodus Studii Medici. Cohausen died at Munster, July 18, 1750, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. ¹