402 



of the two men ; but Chapman had Abernethy's humor, without a 

 tinge of his coarseness and causticity. 



Edinburgh, however, was at this time the medical metropolis 

 of the world ; and, in ISOl, Chapman went there for a sojourn of 

 two years. The influence which the Edinburgh medical school had 

 long exerted over the profession of America is forcibly described by 

 Dr. Jackson in his Discourse commemorative of Dr. Chapman. 

 " The celebrity it had acquired from its Monros, Cullen, Brown, 

 and Gregory, had not been eclipsed by the Paris or German schools, 

 or rivalled by those of London or Dublin. The medical school of 

 the Scotch metropolis was the cynosure of American physicians 

 during the colonial period, and continued to be so until within the 

 last twenty-five years. Most of the eminent medical men of Phila- 

 delphia, New York, and Boston, of the latter part of the last century, 

 were its alumni. I doubt whether, at that time, more was known 

 of the European continental schools than the mere existence of two 

 or three of repute. All of the medical doctrines, ideas, principles, and 

 practice of this country were derived from the Edinburgh school, or 

 from English writers. Our knowledge of the works, contributions 

 to science, doctrines, theories, and practice of the French, German, 

 and Italian medical schools and profession, with some very limited 

 individual exceptions, does not date beyond twenty-five or thirty 

 years." 



The great ornament of the Edinburgh school, Cullen, had been, 

 at this time, some years dead. But his teachings survived, and, 

 indeed, pervaded not only the British isles, but the North American 

 continent. Nowhere were they more implicitly received than in our 

 own country. The lectures of Kuhn, who a short time before had 

 occupied the chair of Theory and Practice in the University of 

 Pennsylvania, are described by Caldwell as '^ strikingly characterized 

 by the doctrines and notions of Cullen, and not a few of them actual 

 copies of his lectures." And ''Cullen's First Lines," down to a 

 period within the recollection of many of our older physicians, 

 was the time-honored text-book of the Practice of Medicine in the 

 United States. 



The doctrines of Cullen, which are to a certain extent founded 

 upon those of Hofi'man, had effected a revolution in medical theories. 

 They superseded the Immoral pathology of Boerhaave, and based 

 diseased action solely upon derangement of the solid organs of the 

 body. The system of Cullen, afterwards rudely simplified by 

 Brown, and again modified by Rush, retained its hold over the 



