THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 

 PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 



Biographical Memoir of M. Philippe Pinel. By Baron 



CuviER *. 



iHiLippE PiNEL having been from childhood designed by 

 his father for the medical profession, prepared himself for it by 

 the early study of mathematics and natural history, and the 

 labours of his whole life tended to introduce into the science of 

 medicine procedures similar to those of geometry, to bring its 

 language to the exactness of that of naturalists, and to subject 

 diseases to accurate divisions and subdivisions, like those under 

 which the productions of nature are arranged, — a very bold 

 attempt, for the mathematics treat only of simple ideas, and 

 natural history only of beings of a determinate form, while the 

 alterations of organized bodies, the subjects of medical science, 

 are among the most complicated, the most changeable, and the 

 most fugitive in nature. 



But M. Pinel did not shew, in the world, this daring mind : 

 there his reserve and bashfulness were extreme, and delayed, 

 beyond the usual term, the period when he obtained the success 

 and ascendancy to which he was entitled. His depressed situa- 

 tion in early life was perhaps the cause of this diffidence. 



He was born on the 20th April 1745, in the small town of St. 

 Andre d'Alaysac, near Castres, where his father, being a prac- 

 titioner of surgery, he received, at home, his first instruction : 



" Read at the Royal Institute of France, on tlic llth June 1827- 

 JULY — OCTOBER 18fs?9. p 



