Johannes Hofer the Elder

Johannes Hofer (27 April 1669 – 26 March 1752) was an Alsatian physician, famous for being at the origin of the concept of nostalgia.

Biography

Johannes Hofer was born in the city of Mulhouse, then an independent republic allied to the Swiss cantons. He was the son of Matthias Hofer (1619–1675), pastor of the Reformed Church of Saint-Étienne, and Cleopha Hartmann. Despite his father's untimely death, Hofer was admitted to the famous University of Basel in 1684, where he first studied philosophy and then medicine. He studied under the famous Basel professor and physician Theodor Zwinger.

After graduating from the aforementioned faculty in 1689, Hofer returned to Mulhouse where, in addition to his position as municipal physician, he held numerous administrative and political positions, from municipal councillor (from 1710) to burgomaster (a position he held for thirty-two years, from 1716 to 1748).

In 1690 he married Margreth Engelmann, daughter of the then mayor, in the first marriage. He was widowed in 1693 and married Elisabeth Hartmann the following year. He had five children with her, one of whom, Johannes (1697–1781), was also an eminent physician and botanist.

The concept of nostalgia

In 1688, one year before defending his main doctoral thesis Dissertatio medica inauguralis de hydrope ovarii muliebris, Hofer defended a secondary thesis before Professor Johann Jacob Harder, in which he described an illness, which he called "nostalgia". The thesis was published in Basel in 1745 under the title Dissertatio curiosa-medica, de nostalgia, vulgo: Heimwehe oder Heimsehnsucht. This was the first time that the particularly painful "homesickness" of Swiss mercenaries who had left the mountain pastures to serve in France or Italy was described. The term nostalgia took on a strictly medical aspect for its author and was analyzed as a real trauma. Other doctors, including Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, were inspired by Hofer's work and tried to find the physiological reasons for this illness.

Further reading

• David Herrliberger, Schweitzerischer Ehrentempel, imprimerie Daniel Eckenstein. Bâle (1748)
• Jean-François Rietsch, Johannes Hofer (1669-1752), médecin et bourgmestre à Mulhouse. Mulhouse (1986)