Biographical Memoir of' M. Philippe PineL 211 



model whom he could follow ; and it may be said, that, like 

 him, he created a mixed method, in which some divisions have 

 a natural basis, while the greater number are founded only on 

 those relations which are named artificial, that is to say, on phe- 

 nomena selected by preference among the most evident, and not 

 among the most essential. 



Thus, of his five great divisions of fevers, the first, that 

 which he names essential fevers, depends only on the symptoms. 

 The author even supposes that these fevers do not spring from 

 a source which is incapable of being made apparent. The 

 second division, or that of the phlegmasiae, is, on the other 

 hand, characterized, whether as a class or in its subdivisions, 

 from the inflammation, which is the original cause of the fever, 

 and from the part where it shews itself. The same variation is 

 observed, if not in the characters, at least in the denominations 

 of the orders and genera of his first division, that of essential 

 fevers. Some, as the adynamic, or putrid fevers, and the ataxic, 

 or malignant, are named according to their symptoms ; others, 

 as the meningo-gastric, or bilious fevers, and the adeno-menin- 

 geal, or mucous fevers, according to the organs which they 

 chiefly aiFect. His fifth class of diseases, which is that of or- 

 ganic lesions, includes several infirmities, such as syphilis and 

 scurvy, in which, at least, any original lesion has not, by any 

 means, been demonstrated. 



Still it must be allowed, that if M. Pinel did not attain a per- 

 fect method, which in medicine, still more than in natural his- 

 tory, properly so called, would seem to be the philosopher's 

 stone, he had yet the merit of introducing into his distribu- 

 tion a much greater degree of order than any of those before 

 him, who had engaged in a similar attempt. He had even 

 ideas which have produced useful results, whether in his own 

 hands, or in those of his pupils ; thus, in the arrangement of 

 fevers, he assigned only a secondary rank to the phenomena of 

 intermittence, remittence, or continuity, which Sauvages, and 

 other nosologists, had placed first, and had thus been induced 

 to separate from each other affections similar in their nature. 



The finest part of his classification is that of inflammations, 

 according to the tissues which they affect, and especially the 

 distinction which he established, more firmly than any of his 



