661 



STAHL, GEORGE ERNEST. 



STANFIELD, CLARKSON, R.A. 



began to deliver lectures. In 1687 the Duke of Weiniar made him his 

 physician j and in 1694, at the instance of Hoffman, he was appointed 

 to a professorship of medicine, anatomy, and chemistry in the Univer- 

 sity of Halle, then recently established. He taught there for twenty- two 

 years, and upon being appointed physician to the King of Prussia, went 

 to Berlin, where he died in 1734. 



The system of medicine which Stahl taught, and on which were 

 founded the principles and practice of his numerous school, may be 

 regarded as produced from a combination of the physiology of Van 

 Helmont, which he learnt at Jena from G. W. Wedel, with the 

 doctrines of Descartes respecting the agency of immaterial principles 

 upon inert matter. Van Helmont taught on the nature and operations 

 of an Archams, as a principle resident in the living body and governing 

 all its actions. Stahl supposed a like influence to be exercised by 

 what he called the anima, an immaterial principle which (as far as 

 can bo ascertained in the obscurity in which his style of writing has 

 involved his meaning) he seems to have regarded as identical with the 

 soul, and as capable of acting both with consciousness, in the opera- 

 tions of the mind, and unconsciously, in the government of the 

 processes in the living body. He held that this anima first forms for 

 itself the body ; and then, abhorring the destruction of that which it 

 has formed, directs all the processes of the organisation so aa to evade 

 death. For this purpose, it guides them to resist putrefaction, and to 

 expel through the appropriate organs the effete particles and morbid 

 substances accidentally introduced ; it directs the repair of all injuries, 

 and, in ordinary nutrition, maintains the due form and composition 

 of the tissues. For this last process (as an example of its agency in 

 all the rest) he supposes the anima to have knowledge (independently 

 of the consciousness of the animal in which it works) of the necessary 

 Composition of every part of the body and of the materials to be given 

 to each, and to have power to guide aright all the acts necessary to 

 the required end. These acts, he considered, are effected by what he 

 jiarned tonic vital movements, that is, movements of alternate tension 

 and relaxation, dependent on a property of tone resident in all the 

 soft tissues of the body, and by which, under the influence of the 

 auima, each part directs the movements of the fluid in its vessels or 

 its parenchyma. 



Disturbances of the government of the anima and of this property 

 of tone constituted the chief elements in Stabl's pathology ; and the 

 signs of disease were regarded by him as indications of the efforts of 

 the anima to remove the source of the malady and to preserve the 

 body, either by means of extraordinary tonic movements, or sometimes 

 by the most violent spasms and convulsions. He held that one of the 

 commonest sources of disease was plethora, either local or general ; 

 and for this, the hemorrhages from different organs at different 

 periods of life were regarded as the remedies employed by the anima. 

 Especially, he applied these notions to the vena porta, in which, from 

 the slowness of the circulation in it, plethora was thought peculiarly 

 apt to occur; and to this condition he mainly attributed hypochondria, 

 melancholy, gout, calculus, and haemorrhoids ; so that it came to be an 

 aphorism of his school, "Vena porta, porta malorum." Fevers in 

 general he considered to be the results of the anima endeavouring by 

 the local tonic actions to expel some morbid matter ; and their fatality, 

 like that of most other diseases, he ascribed to the morbid matter 

 being too abundant or the tonic powers too weak for its expulsion. 



Stahl's therapeutics corresponded closely with his theory of disease. 

 His principles of treatment were to aid the beneficial efforts of the 

 anima and to remove the obstacles to its action. His remedies were 

 few and simple, consisting chiefly of bleeding for the relief of plethora, 

 aud of mild evacuant medicines. 



Medical science owes much of its progress to the energy and acute- 

 ness with which Stahl aided in overturning the notion which, before 

 his time, was generally prevalent in the schools, that the simple laws of 

 chemistry or of mechanics were all on which the phenomena of the 

 living body depended, and in drawing attention to the body as an 

 organism governed by peculiar laws, and having all its healthy pro- 

 cesses adapted to one final purpose, namely, the preservation of the 

 whole by the different actions of its parts. He rushed indeed into an 

 extreme opposite to that of his immediate predecessors; for he treated 

 with all the bitter sarcasm and morose contempt of his naturally stern 

 temper every endeavour to apply any other science, even anatomy, 

 in the study of medicine ; and he mystified the principle which he sun- 

 posed to rule the organism. His hypothesis of an ' anima' has been 

 ridiculed ; yet, with another name, it is that which is adopted in nearly 

 all the physiology of the present day : the ' vital principle ' and the 

 'nature' of the majority of modern medical writers differ in little 

 more than name from the ' anima/ the ' archaeus,' and the <f> vats of 

 Hippocrates ; the common hypothesis involved in all is that of an 

 immaterial principle resident in the living body, and governing ' with 

 reason ' all the processes in it for the final purpose of preserving life. 

 Though the hypothesis be false, the medical sciences have made great 

 progress through being pursued in the spirit which it suggests ; and 

 to this progress no man's labours have contributed more than those 

 of Stahl. 



Though Stahl despised chemistry in its attempted application to 

 medicine, we owe to him an important step in the advancement of that 

 science. Taking up the crude opinions of Becker, as he did those of 

 Van Helmont, he became the inventor of the theory of Phlogiston, 



which for many years had such influence in chemistry, and in the 

 working out of which, though it was based in error, BO many impor- 

 tant truths were ascertained. 



Haller, in his ' Bibliotheca Medicinse Practicse/ torn. iii. p. 577, gives 

 a list, collated by J. C. Goetz, of 250 medical works written or super- 

 intended and edited by StahL That in which his medical doctrines 

 are most completely taught is entitled ' Theoria Medica vera Pbysio- 

 logiam et Pathologiam tanquam Doctrinss Medica) partes contempla- 

 tivas e Naturse et Artis veris Fundamentia intaminata Ratione et 

 inconcussa Expericutia sistenB.' It was published by him in 1707 and 

 1708. All the peculiarities of his system however are discernible in 

 his inaugural thesis 'De Sanguificatione,' Jenaj,-1684. His chemical 

 works were comparatively few : he first proposed the phlogistic theory 

 in 1697, in his 'Zymotechnia Fundamentalist The best brief account 

 of his doctrines is in Haller, and in Sprengel, ' Histoire de la Medi- 

 cine,' torn. v. 



STAIR, EARL OF. [DALRYMPLE.] 



*STANFIELD, CLARKSON, R.A. was born at Sunderland towards 

 the close of the last century. Of a somewhat errant disposition, the 

 sea was his first art-academy, and it was perhaps the best he could 

 have entered : it may be noticed as a curious circumstance that 

 young Stanfield served as a sailor on board the same ship in which 

 Douglas Jerrold was a midshipman ; and the officers having got 

 up a play, Stanfield painted the scenery, while Jerrold acted as 

 stage-manager. To his sailor days may undoubtedly be attributed 

 Stanfield's thorough acquaintance with everything connected with 

 salt-water which has given his pictures so special a character. Other 

 painters have drawn hulls, and masts, and spars, with a more pattern- 

 book accuracy perhaps, but hardly another has so truly given the 

 vessel's character, and none that we can remember ever made a ship 

 sit so easily and truly on the water, or represented the sea itself with 

 so direct and unexaggerated a fidelity. But when he quitted his sea- 

 academy he entered another the influence of which was by no means 

 so beneficial, though in it he undoubtedly obtained a great accession 

 of artistic power. As the means which circumstances rendered the 

 most opportune for turning his passion for art and his store of sketches 

 to account, be accepted an engagement as a scene-painter at the old 

 Royalty theatre by Wellclose Square, then noted as a sailor's theatre, 

 and one consequently where familiarity with the sea and maritime 

 matters would be no small recommendation in a scene-painter. Here 

 he worked hard and acquired much of that mastery over his materials, 

 facility of execution, and knowledge of effect which have ever since 

 distinguished him. He appears to have formed his style in a great 

 measure upon that of Loutherbourg, an artist who had raised scene- 

 painting in this country to a standard previously scarcely thought of, 

 and which, until Stanfield succeeded, was certainly never equalled. 

 In course of time Stanfield passed from the Royalty to Drury-lane 

 theatre, and there on a larger stage and with greatly increased know- 

 ledge and power, and more ample means, he painted scenes of un- 

 rivalled brilliancy and beauty ; and in the moving panoramic views, of 

 which for several years a series used to be exhibited in the Christmas 

 pantomimes, he displayed a succession of pictures so beautiful that 

 regret never failed to be mingled with the pleasure felt in looking at 

 them, at the recollection that they must necessarily perish with the 

 season. 



But Mr. Stanfield did not at any time confine his pencil to the 

 service of the theatre. It was there he looked for his chief stay in 

 his earlier artistic life ; but he painted marine views and coast scenery 

 for private friends, and with constantly increasing success. It was 

 sometime however before he became known to the frequenters of the 

 picture-galleries. His earlier exhibition triumphs were won in the 

 galleries of the British Institution and the Society of British Artists, 

 of which last society he was for some years a member. It was not 

 till 1832, when his reputation was already established as, in his line, 

 the first of living English painters, that he was elected an Associate 

 of the Royal Academy having of course first resigned his connection 

 with the Society of British Artists; and in 1835 he was elected an 

 Academician. By this time he was gradually giving up his connection 

 with the theatre, and after a while he entirely relinquished it : only 

 on one or two occasions proffering his matchless skill as a friendly 

 service as when he painted a drop and a few scenes for his friend 

 Macready ; a scene or two for the ' Not so Bad as we Seem ' of the Guild 

 of Literature ; and the like for the private theatre of Charles Dickens. 



From his election into the Royal Academy, Mr. Stanfield has been 

 one of the most constant and prolific contributors to the exhibitions 

 of that body. It would be impossible therefore to give anything like 

 a complete list of his pictures even if we confined ourselves to such 

 as he sent there ; but in truth so large a proportion of them consists 

 of mere views of places that the titles would be little better than a 

 topographical catalogue. The leading ones include numerous views 

 in and about Venice, Naples, the Adriatic, Como, Ischia, Amalfi, Rome, 

 Lago Maggiore, the coasts of Normandy, Holland, &c., with occasion- 

 ally an English scene, as Tilbury Fort, the Nore, or the Reculvers. As 

 will be seen, these views of places chiefly comprise a combination of 

 sea and land, and, except in some few of his larger and more care- 

 fully-considered efforts, never does he work so effectively as when sea 

 and shore, with some toiling craft in danger, or beating up into the 

 bay for shelter, or lying lazily at anchor, form the subject of his 



