PATHFINDERS OF PHYSIOLOGY 17 



/ shape them to its own end and will do that by its own instrument, mo- 

 tion." Stahl, it will be seen, belonged to the^'Vitalists/' which par- 

 ticular type of physiologist has only within recent years become ex-^ ^ , 

 tinct. His fundamental position was, between living and non-living^' v^^. 

 things there is a great gulf fixed. Living things so long as they are] 

 alive are actuated by the sensitive soul; non-living things are not. 

 The rational soul of man governed his whole body. The healing 

 power of nature, vis medicatrix naturae, has been recognized from 

 the most ancient to the present time. Stahl's system was founded 

 upon the supposition that the vis naturae existed entirely in the ra- 

 tional soul. In consequence of Stahl's doctrine, he and his followers 

 proposed the art of curing by expectation, medicina expectans, which ^ 

 practice led to the prescribing of inert remedies, placebos. 



Payer and Brunner — In the catalogue of workers in physiology of f^ ^^^ 

 the seveneteenth century are the names of Jean Conrad Peyer and >^ 

 Brunner. Peyer was bom in Switzerland in 1653. He studied at 

 Basel and Paris and returned to his native town, Schaffhausen, to 

 practise, where he died in 1712. In 1677 he published a brochure in 

 which he described certain new glands scattered" over the intestine; 

 these glands are familiar to every student of physiology or histology 

 as 'fPeyer's patches." He was the first to give a full description of 

 these glnds are familiar to every student of physiology or histology 

 lower part of the small intestine and in the ileum, making a distinction 

 between the single or solitary and the patches of agminated glands. 

 "His discovery harmonized with that of Brunner a few years later. 



Brunner was born at Dieffenhausen in 1653. He studied at 

 Strassburg and was eventually called to the chair of medicine at Hei- 

 delberg, shortly after entering upon his position he published his 

 Dissertatio Inauguralis de Glandulis Duodeni, in which he describes 

 the glands which have since borne his name, Brunner's glands. He 

 attributed to these glands a function similar to the pancreas and 

 spoke of them as a "pancreas secondarium." Brunner had made num- 

 erous experiments by removing the pancreas from dogs. He con- 

 cluded that the animals thus operated suffered in no wise from ill 

 health, consequently the digestive powers of pancreatic juice were 

 practically nothing. These gropings of the seventeenth century are 

 curiously interesting viewed in the light of the twentieth. The work 

 of Peyer and Brunner served to deprive of its glory that of Sylvius 

 and DeGraaf, who had attributed important digestive powers to the 

 pancreatic juice. The attention of physiologists was again centered 

 on the older view that the stomach was the chief seat of digestion. 



Mechanical and Chemical Views of Digestion. — Two views con- 

 cerning gastric digestion contended for first place. One, which may 

 be designated the mechanical, was espoused by Borelli, who was the 

 founder of the so-called latromathematical school, which professed to 

 be able to reduce all the motions and activities of nature to mathe- 

 matical formulae. Borelli's studies were made on the stomachs or 

 gizzards of birds. He pointed out the great grinding or pressing force 

 effected by the muscular coats of the stomach. He compares the ac- 

 •jon of the fleshy stomach to that of the teeth, and continues: "We 

 nave already shown that the absolute force of the muscles which close 

 the human jaw represents a power greater than that of a weight of 

 350 pounds; therefore, the force of the turkey's stomach is not \e?-^ 



