Hufeland was born at
Langensalza,
Saxony (now
Thuringia) and educated at
Weimar, where his father held the office of court physician to the grand duchess. In 1780 he entered the
University of Jena, and in the following year went on to
Göttingen, where in 1783 he graduated in
medicine. After assisting his father for some years at Weimar, he was called in 1793 to the chair of medicine at Jena, receiving at the same time the positions of court physician and professor of
pathology at Weimar. During this time, he began a substantive correspondence with
Immanuel Kant. In 1798
Frederick William III of Prussia granted him the position director of the medical college and generally of state medical affairs at the
Charité, in
Berlin. He filled the chair of
pathology and therapeutics in the
University of Berlin, founded in 1809, and in 1810 became councillor of state. In 1823, he was elected a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In time he became as famous as
Goethe,
Herder,
Schiller, and
Wieland in his homeland. Hufeland was a close friend of
Samuel Hahnemann and published his original writings in his journal in 1796. He also "joined the
Illuminati order at this time, having been introduced to freemasonry in Göttingen in 1783." He also seems to have professed an interest in
Chinese Alchemy and methods of extending
longevity. The most widely known of his many writings is the treatise entitled
Makrobiotik oder Die Kunst, das menschliche Leben zu verlängern (1796), which was translated into many languages, including in Serbian by Jovan Stejić in Vienna in 1828. Of his practical works, the
System of Practical Medicine (
System der praktischen Heilkunde, 1818–1828) is the most elaborate. From 1795 to 1835, he published a
Journal der praktischen Arznei und Wundarzneikunde. His
autobiography was published in 1863. Hufeland died on 25 August 1836, in
Berlin. in Berlin ==Naturopathy==