126 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



begun the work of natural history by inventing a system 

 of classification and a technical language or nomenclature. 

 Buffon in his brilliant and elegant portraits had cast around 

 it the charms of poetry and romance. Jussieu had im- 

 ported botany from Sweden into France, and in the garden 

 of Trianon had given a living model of the arrangement 

 of plants ; botanising had become popular through the 



union of the practical and philo- 

 sophical spirit been more marked 

 than in the medical sciences. Essen- 

 tially interested as it is in the im- 

 mediate application of scientific dis- 

 coveries to the needs of suffering 

 mankind, we witness in the course 

 of the seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries a one-sided alliance of the 

 art of healing with chemistry (Sylvi- 

 us, 1614-1672), with physics (Borelli, 

 1608-1679), and with mechanics (Pit- 

 cairn, 1652-1713), and the reaction 

 of the animists (Stahl, 1660-1734, 

 and Hoffmann, 1660-1752), and the 

 vitalists (Bordeu, 1722-1776, and 

 Barthez, 1734-1806). A large por- 

 tion of the history of medicine (see 

 Haeser, ' Geschichte der Medicin,' 

 Jena, 1881, vol. ii., and Guardia, 

 ' Histoire de la Me"decine,' Paris, 

 1884) consists in the account of the 

 opposition to premature generalisa- 

 tions, adopted from other sciences, 

 or still more dangerously from meta- 

 physics. As examples of the meta- 

 physical tendency we have the Scotch 

 systems of Cullen and Brown, and 

 the German "Philosophy of Nature." 

 The reasons why philosophy has so 

 frequently allied itself with medi- 

 cine, thus preventing the purely 

 .scientific spirit from gaining ad- 

 mission, are twofold. " Young 

 men," says Cuvier, "adopt these 

 theories with enthusiasm, because 

 they seem to abridge their studies 

 and to give a thread in an almost 

 inextricable labyrinth " (' Rapport,' 

 p. 333). The other reason is that 

 the art of healing has as much a 



psychological as a physical 'side, 

 and a philanthropic as much as 

 a scientific interest. In respect of 

 this it is well to note that the age 

 and country which gave to Europe 

 the great models of purely scientific 

 research in Laplace and Cuvier was 

 rich also in great thinkers who 

 applied themselves in a philoso- 

 phical spirit to the advancement of 

 scientific and practical medicine, to 

 the reform of hospitals, to the care 

 of the insane, to the education of 

 the deaf and dumb. The whole 

 school of the ideologues, headed by 

 Condorcet, Cabanis, and Destutt 

 de Tracy, was closely allied with 

 the medical profession. But how- 

 ever important this side of French 

 thought may have been, its in- 

 fluence on the rest of Europe at 

 that time cannot be compared 

 with that of the purely scientific 

 writings belonging to mathematics 

 and natural science. Such names 

 as Cabanis and Bichat belong to 

 a different current of European 

 thought, which I purposely separate 

 from the exact or purely scientific. 

 And this separation is justified his- 

 torically by the fact that in the 

 Academic des Sciences for a con- 

 siderable time medical science was 

 only meagrely represented, whilst 

 philosophy during the period of the 

 suppression of the Academic des 

 Sciences morales et politiques, from 

 1803-1832, had no academic re- 

 presentation at all. The great 

 name of Bichat is not among the 

 Academicians, and Cuvier himself 



