XIV BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE 361 



no one, even among professional men, who will 

 not declare that all we know is very little as com- 

 pared with that which remains to be known ; and 

 that we might escape an infinity of diseases of the 

 mind, no less than of the body, and even perhaps 

 from the weakness of old age, if we had sufficient 

 knowledge of their causes, and of all the remedies 

 with which nature has provided us." x So strongly 

 impressed was Descartes with this, that he resolved 

 to spend the rest of his life in trying to acquire 

 such a knowledge of nature as would lead to the 

 construction of a better medical doctrine. 2 The 

 anti-Cartesians found material for cheap ridicule 

 in these aspirations of the philosopher ; and it is 

 almost needless to say that, in the thirteen years 

 which elapsed between the publication of the 

 " Discours " and the death of Descartes, he did not 

 contribute much to their realisation. But, for the 

 next century, all progress in physiology took place 

 along the lines which Descartes laid down. 



The greatest physiological and pathological work 

 of the seventeenth century, Borelli's treatise " De 

 Motu Animalium," is, to all intents and purposes, 

 a development of Descartes' fundamental concep- 

 tion ; and the same may be said of the physiology 

 and pathology of Boerhaave, whose authority 

 dominated in the medical world of the first half 

 of the eighteenth century. 



1 Discours de la Mtthode, 6 a partie, Ed. Cousin, p. 193. 

 > Ibid. pp. 193 and 211. 



