910 Biographical Memoir of M. Pkllippe Pincl. 



of the physical and chemical properties of inanimate matter, 

 but which have never, in any age, added to the history, and still 

 less to the pathology, of living bodies, any thing but chimerical 

 applications. It is to M. Pinel that we are chiefly indebted for 

 having driven them from our schools ; and, had he no othef 

 merit, science would be under the greatest obligations to him 

 for this service alone. The physician, in a word, according to 

 him, ought, without forming systems about causes, to observe 

 and describe a disease, as a naturalist describes a plant or an in- 

 sect, who does not lose himself in researches into the mecha- 

 nism of its functions, too much beyond what we yet know of 

 organisation. It was for this reason that he preferred the title 

 of Nosography, or Description of Diseases, to that of Nosology, 

 which, before his time, was employed for works of the same 

 kind, and which indicates a theory of diseases, and a more inti- 

 mate knowledge of their nature. 



But the naturalist distributes plants and animals in a certain 

 order. He arranges their species under certain genera, as the 

 only means of recognising them amid so great a multitude 

 of different beings. In this, also, according to M. Pinel, the 

 physiciati may imitate him. 



The principle once admitted, that each disease has its regular 

 course, it is the series of its phenomena that constitutes its 

 species, and the phenomena common to several diseases form 

 the links by which they may be united into groups, ranged un- 

 der each other. Different ways even may be taken, as in natu- 

 ral history ; either the most evident phenomena may be at- 

 tended to ; and thus, what is called an artificial method, may 

 be formed ; or the intimate nature of diseases may be more 

 closely investigated, attention being also paid to their situation, 

 and to the particular kind of alterations which they produce in 

 the tissues, or in the functions of the organised body, and thus 

 their distribution would be assimilated to what in botany and 

 zoology are called natural methods. But, at the time when M. 

 Pinel began his researches, the differences of these two methods 

 in natural history, and the advantages or inconveniences pecu- 

 liar to each, were not yet fully appreciated, and he could not 

 avail himself of the results on this subject, which the great na- 

 tiu^alists of our day have since obtained. Linnaeus was the only 



