400 INTRODUCTORY LECTURES. 



made, and the plan that is pursued, it gives us encouragement 

 to aspire, and great hopes of high attainment. 



Seventh Period. You must here observe, that the effects of a 

 dogmatic system depend not so much upon the peculiarity of its 

 being dogmatic, as upon its being limited in its views with respect 

 to the animal system, and thereby becoming attached to certain 

 remedies, whilst it absolutely rejects others, and, by doing so, 

 shuts out experience, which should correct both. But this 

 had been the fault of all the systems hitherto. The Methodics 

 were too limited in their view of the organic system ; and al- 

 though Galen cannot be said to have absolutely neglected the 

 organic system, since he admitted the doctrine of Plethora, yet 

 it is sufficiently evident that his system turned almost entirely 

 upon the intemperies of the fluids, and his followers were very 

 properly, by Van Helmont, called Humoristae. The Chemists 

 who succeeded the Galenists, neglected still more the view of 

 the organic system, and even that which Van Helmont, who 

 was of their own sect, had opened to them. In short, the chem- 

 ists generally became more strictly humorists than their prede- 

 cessors, especially as they absolutely rejected the doctrine of 

 Plethora. All this produced a limited state of practice ; and it 

 was such among the Galenists, Chemists, and Cartesians, till 

 after the middle of the seventeenth century. But now the doc- 

 trine of the circulation, coming to be fully understood, in some 

 measure forced the attention of physicians towards the organic 

 system. The study of mathematics prevailing at the same 

 time, the mathematical physicians appeared, who were neces- 

 sarily attached to the study of the hydraulic system ; and the 

 Cartesians became blended by degrees with these mathematical 

 physicians, so that the system of physic became gradually enlarged. 

 The state of it, however, in the hands of Sylvius de le Boe, 

 Willis, and Etmuller, the chief systematics for some time after 

 the middle of the seventeenth century, was still much limited. 



The effect to be especially expected from the discovery of 

 the circulation, was, that physicians should immediately appre- 

 hend that interruptions and irregularities in the motion of the 

 fluids have a very large share in the diseases of the body, and 

 perhaps much more than changes in the condition of the fluids, 

 to which diseases had hitherto been imputed by the chemists 





