THE MONISTIC THEORY. 35 



to matter. The explanation of the world, the 

 explanation of life, were reduced to the play of 

 physical or mechanical forces. Epicurus, a little later, 

 maintained that the knowledge of matter and its 

 different forms accounts for all phenomena, and there- 

 fore for those of life. 



Descartes, sharply separating the metaphysical 

 world — that is to say, the soul defined by its at- 

 tribute, thought — from the physical or material world 

 characterized by extension, practically came to the 

 same conclusions as the materialists of antiquity. To 

 him, as to them, the living body was a mere machine. 



latro-mechanism. Descartes. Borelli. — This, then, is 

 the theory of the iatro-mechanicians, of which we may 

 consider Descartes the founder, instead of the Greek 

 philosophers. These ideas held their own for two 

 centuries, and were productive of such fruitful results 

 in the hands of Borelli, Pitcairn, Hales, Bernoulli, and 

 Boerhaave, as to justify the jest of Bacon that "the 

 philosophy of Epicurus had done less harm to science 

 than that of Plato." The iatro-mechanic school ten- 

 aciously held its own until Bichat came upon the scene. 



latro-cJiemistry. Sylvius le Bo'e. — It was from a 

 reaction against their exaggerations that Stahl 

 created animism, and the Montpellier school created 

 vitalism. We gather some idea of the extravagant 

 character of their explanations by reading Boerhaave. 

 To this celebrated doctor the muscles were springs, 

 the heart was a pump, the kidneys a sieve, and the 

 secretions of the glandular juices were produced by 

 pressure ; the heat of the body was the result of the 

 friction of the globules of blood against the walls of 

 the blood-vessels; it was greater in the lungs because 

 the vessels of the lungs were supposed to be narrower 



