original observations to his translation (1780-1783) of
Bernardino Ramazzini's (1633-1714) treatise on diseases of
artificers. In 1786 he became professor of medicine at
the university of Altdorf, in Franconia, occupying first
the chair of chemistry, and then, from 1794 till his death
in 1801, that of pathology and therapeutics. He wrote
Institutiones Historiae Medicinae (Nuremberg, 1792) and
Institutiones Therapiae Generalls (Nuremberg and Altdorf,
1784-1795), besides various handbooks and translations.
ACKERMANN, LOUISE VICTORINE CHOQUET (1813-1890), French poet,
was born in Paris on the 30th of November 1813. Educated by
her father in the philosophy of the Encyclopaedists, Victorine
Choquet went to Berlin in 1838 to study German, and there
married in 1843 Paul Ackermann, an Alsatian philologist. After
little more than two years of happy married life her husband
died, and Madame Ackermann went to live at Nice with a favourite
sister. In 1855 she published Contes en vers, and in 1862
Contes et poesies. Very different from these simple and
charming contes is the work on which Madame Ackermann's
real reputation rests. She published in 1874 Poesies,
premieres poesies, poesies philosophiques, a volume of
sombre and powerful verse, expressing her revolt against human
suffering. The volume was enthusiastically reviewed in the
Revue des deux mondes for May 1871 by E. Caro, who, though
he deprecated the impiete desesperee of the verses,
did full justice to their vigour and the excellence of their
form. Soon after the publication of this volume Madame Ackermann
removed to Paris,where she gathered round her a circle of
friends, but published nothing further except a prose volume, the
Pensees d'un solitaire (1883), to which she prefixed a short
autobiography. She died at Nice on the 2nd of August 1890.
See also Anatole France, La vie litteraire, 4th series (1892);
the comte d'Haussonville, Mme. Ackermann (1882); M. Citoleux,
La poesie philosophique au XIXe. siecle (vol. i., Mme.
Ackermann d'apres de nombreux documents inedits, Paris, 1906).
ACKERMANN, RUDOLPH (1764-1834), Anglo-German inventor and
publisher, was born on the 20th of April 1764 at Schneeberg, in
Saxony. He had been a saddler and coachbuilder in different
German cities, Paris and London for ten years before, in
1795, he established a print-shop and drawing-school in the
Strand. Ackermann set up a lithographic press, and applied
it in 1817 to the illustration of his Repository of Arts,
Literature, Fashions,; &c. (monthly until 1828 when forty
volumes had appeared). Rowlandson and other distinguished
artists were regular contributors. He also introduced the
fashion of the once popular English Annuals, beginning in
1825 with Forget-me-not; and he published many illustrated
volumes of topography and travel, The Microcosm of London
(3 vols., 1808-1811), Westminster Abbey (2 vols., 1812),
Pine Rhine (1820), The World in Miniature (43 vols.,
1821--1826), &c. Ackermann was an enterprising man; he
patented (1801) a method for rendering paper and cloth
waterproof, erected a factory at Chelsea for the purpose
and was one of the first to illuminate his own premises with
gas. Indeed the introduction of lighting by gas owed much to
him. After the battle of Leipzig Ackermann collected nearly
a quarter of a million sterling for the German sufferers.
He died at Finchley, near London, on the 30th of March 1834.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT (from the old acknow, a compound of on-
and know, to know by the senses, which passed through the
forms oknow, aknow and acknow; acknowledge is formed on
analogy of ``knowledge''), an admission that something has been
given or done, a term used in law in various connexions. The
acknowledgment of a debt, if in writing signed by the debtor
or his agent, is sufficient to take it out of the Statutes of
Limitations. The signature to a will by a testator, if not
made in the presence of two witnesses, may be afterwards
acknowledged in their presence. The acknowledgment by a
woman married before 1882 of deeds for the conveyance of real
property not her separate property, requires to be made by
her before a judge of the High Court or of a county court or
before a perpetual or special commissioner. Before such an
acknowledgment can be received, the judge or commissioner is
required to examine her apart from her husband, touching her
knowledge of the deed, and to ascertain whether she freely and
voluntarily consents to it. An acknowledgment to the right
of the production of deeds of conveyance is an obligation
on the vendor, when he retains any portion of the property
to which the deeds relate, and is entitled to retain the
deeds, to produce them from time to time at the request of
the person to whom the acknowledgment is given, to allow
copies to be made, and to undertake for their safe custody
(Conveyancing Act 1881, s. 9). The term ``acknowledgment''
is, in the United States, applied to the certificate of a
public officer that an instrument was acknowledged before
him to be the deed or act of the person who executed it. .
``Acknowledgment money'' is the sum paid in some parts of England
by copyhold tenants on the death of the lord of the manor.
ACLAND, CHRISTIAN HENRIETTA CAROLINE (1750-1815), usually
called Lady Harriet Acland, was born on the 3rd of January
1750, the daughter of the first earl of Ilchester. In 1770
she married John Dyke Acland, who as a member of parliament
became a vigorous supporter of Lord North's policy towards
the American colonies, and, entering the British army in
1774, served with Burgoyne's expedition as major in the 20th
regiment of foot. Lady Hurriet accompanied her husband,
and, when he was wounded at Ticonderoga, nursed him in
his tent at the front. In the second battle of Saratoga
Major Acland was again badly wounded and subsequently taken
prisoner. Lady Harriet was determined to be with him, and
underwent great hardship to accomplish her object, proving
herself a courageous and devoted wife. A story has been
told that being provided with a letter from General Burgoyne
to the American general Gates, she went up the Hudson river
in an open boat to the enemy's lines, arriving late in the
evening. The American outposts threatened to fire into the
boat if its occupants stirred, and Lady Hnrriet had to wait
eight ``dark and cold hours,'' until the sun rose, when she
at last received permission to join her husband. Major Acland
died in 1778, and Lady Harriet on the 21st of July 1815.
ACLAND, SIR HENRY WENTWORTH, BART. (1815-1900), English
physician and man of learning, was born near Exeter on the
23rd of August 1815, and was the fourth son of Sir Thomas
Dyke Acland (1787-1871). Educated at Harrow and at Christ
Church, Oxford, he was elected fellow of All Souls in 1840, and
then studied medicine in London and Edinburgh. Returning to
Oxford, he was appointed Lee's reader in anatomy at Christ
Church in 1845, and in 1851 Radcliffe librarian and physician
to the Radcliffe infirmary. Seven years later he became
regius professor of medicine, a post which he retained till
1894. He was also a curator of the university galleries
and of the Bodleian Library, and from 1858 to 1887 he
represented his university on the General Medical Council,
of which he served as president from 1874 to 1887. Hn
was created a baronet in 1890, and ten years later, on the
16th of October 1900, he died at his house in Broad Street,
Oxford. Acland took a leading part in the revival of the
Oxford medical school and in introducing the study of natural
science into the university. As Lee's reader he began to
form a collection of anatomical and physiological preparations
on the plan of John Hunter, and the establishment of the
Oxford University museum, opened in 1861, as a centre for
the encouragement of the study of science, especially in
relation to medicine, was largely due to his efforts. ``To
Henry Acland,'' said his lifelong friend, John Ruskin,
``physiology was an entrusted gospel of which he was the
solitary preacher to the heathen,'' but on the other hand his
thorough classical training preserved science at Oxford from
too abrupt a severance from the humanities. In conjunction
with Dean Liddell, he revolutionized the study of art and
archaeology, so that the cultivation of these subjects, for
which, as Ruskin declared, no one at Oxford cared before that
time, began to flourish in the university. Acland was also
interested in questions of public health. He served on the
royal commission on sanitary laws in England and Wales in
1869, and published a study of the outbreak of cholera at
Oxford in 1854, together with various pamphlets on sanitary
matters. His memoir on the topography of the Troad, with
panoramic plan (1839), was among the fruits of a cruise which
he made in the Mediterranean for the sake of his health.
ACME (Gr. akme, point), the highest point
attainable; first used as an English word by Ben Jonson.
ACMITE, or AEGIRITE, a mineral of the pyroxene (q.v.)
group, which may be described as a soda-pyroxene, being
essentially a sodium and ferric metasilicate, NAFe(SiO3)2.
In its crystallographic characters it is close to ordinary
pyroxene (augite and diopside), being monoclinic and having
nearly the same angle between the prismatic cleavages. There
are, however, important differences in the optical characters:
the birefringence of acmite is negative, the pleochroism is
strong and the extinction angle on the plane of symmetry measured
to the vertical axis is small (3 deg. -5 deg. ). (The hardness is
6-6 1/2, and the specific gravity 3.55. Crystals are elongated
in the direction of the vertical axis, and are blackish
green (aegirite) or dark brown (acmite) in colour. Being
isomorphous with augite, crystals intermediate in composition
between augite or diopside and aegirite are not uncommon,
and these are known as aegirine-augite or aegirine-diopside.
Acmite is a characteristic constituent of igneous rocks
rich in soda, such as nepheline-syenites, phonolites, &c.
It was first discovered as slender crystals, sometimes
a foot in length, in the pegmatite veins of the granite
of Rundemyr, near Kongsbeig in Rorway, and was named by
F. Stromeyer in 1821 from the Gr. akme, a point, in
allusion to the pointed terminations of the crystals.
Aegirite (named from Aegir, the Scandinavian sea-god) was
described in 1835 from the elaeolite-syenite of southern
Norway. Although exhibiting certain varietal differences,
the essential identity of acmite and aegirite has long been
established, but the latter and more recent name is pethaps
in more general use, especially among petrologists.
ACNE, a skin eruption produced by inflammation of the sebaceous
glands and hair follicles, the essential point in the disease
being the plugging of the mouths of the sebaceous follicles
by a ``comedo,'' familiarly known as ``blackhead.'' It is
now generally acknowledged that the cause of this disease is
the organism known as bacillus acnes. It shows itself in the
form of red pimples or papules, which may become pustular and
be attended with considerable surrounding irritation of the
skin. This affection is likewise most common in early adult
life, and occurs on the chest and back as well as on the
face, where it may, when of much extent, produce considerable
disfigurement. It is apt to persist for months or even years,
but usually in time disappears entirely, although slight
traces may remain in the form of scars or stains upon the
skin. Eruptions of this kind are sometimes produced by the
