406 INTRODUCTORY LECTURES. 



use of some of the most efficacious, such as opium and the Pe- 

 ruvian bark ; and are extremely reserved in the use of general 

 remedies, such as bleeding, vomiting, &c. 



Although these remarks upon a system which may now be 

 considered as exploded or neglected, may seem superfluous, I 

 have been willing to give these strictures on the Stahlian sys- 

 tem, that I might carry my remarks a little farther ; and take 

 this opportunity of observing, that, in whatever manner we may 

 explain what have been called the operations of nature, it ap- 

 pears to me, that the general doctrine of Nature curing dis- 

 eases, the so much vaunted Hippocratic method of curing, has 

 often had a very baneful influence on the practice of physic, as 

 either leading physicians into, or continuing them in a weak and 

 feeble practice, and at the same time superseding or discour- 

 aging all the attempts of art. Dr. Huxham has properly ob- 

 served, that even in the hands of Sydenham it had this effect. 

 Although it may sometimes avoid the mischiefs of bold and rash 

 practitioners, yet it certainly produces that caution and timid- 

 ity, which have ever opposed the introduction of new and effica- 

 cious remedies. The opposition to chemical medicines in the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the noted condemna- 

 tion of antimony by the medical faculty of Paris, are to be at- 

 tributed chiefly to those prejudices which the physicians of 

 France did not entirely get the better of for near an hundred 

 years after. We may take notice of the reserve it produced in 

 Boerhaave, with respect to the use of the Peruvian bark. We 

 have had lately published, under the title of Constitutiones 

 Epidemicae, notes of the particular practice of the late Baron 

 Van Swieten, upon which the editor very properly observes, 

 that the use of the bark in intermitting fevers appears very 

 rarely in that practice; and we know very well where Van 

 Swieten learned that reserve. 



I might go further, and shew how much the attention to the 

 Autocrateia, allowed of in one shape or other, by every sect, has 

 corrupted the practice among all physicians, from Hippocrates to 

 Stahl. It must, however, be sufficiently obvious ; and I shall 

 conclude the subject with observing, that although the vis medi- 

 catrix nature? must unavoidably be received as a fact, yet, 



