Asch, George Thomas Baron D'

, an eminent Russian physician, counsellor of state, and member of many academies, was born at Petersburgh of German parents, in 1729, and died in that city in 1807. He studied in the university of Gottingen, under Haller, and his reputation is in a great measure owing to the respect he preserved for that celebrated school, and to the princely contributions he made to it. His fortune enabled him to make vast collections during his various travels, a part, of which he regularly sent every year to Gottingen. In particular he enriched the library with a complete collection of Russian writers, a beautiful Koran, Turkish manuscripts, and many other curious articles and he added to the museum a great number of valuable articles collected throughout the Russian empire, curious habits, armour, instruments, minerals, medals, &c. He was also a liberal contributor to Blumenbach’s collection. As a writer, he had a principal part in the Russian Pharmacopoeia, Petersburgh, 1778, 4to, and wrote many essays, in Latin and German, on different subjects of physiology and medicine, of which a list may be seen in the “Gelehrtes Deutschland” of M. Meusel, fourth edition, vol. I. p. 98. What he published on the plague has been highly valued by practitioners, and there are two curious papers by him In No. 171 and 176 of our Philosophical Transactions. | His memory was honoured by Heyne with an elegant eulogium, “De Obitu Bar. de Asch, ad vivos amantissimos J. Fr. Blumenbach, et J. D. Reuss,” 4to. ¹