HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 407 



wherever it is admitted, it throws an obscurity upon our system; 

 and it is only where the impotence of our art is very manifest 

 and considerable, that we ought to admit of it in practice. 



To finish our remarks upon the Stahlian system, I shall shortly 

 observe, that it did not depend entirely upon the Autocrateia, 

 but also supposed a state of the body and diseases that admit- 

 ted of remedies, which, under the power and direction of the 

 soul, acted upon the organization and matter of the body so as 

 to cure its diseases. Upon this footing the Stahlian pathology 

 turned entirely upon Plethora and Cacochymy. It was with 

 respect to the former that they especially applied their doctrine 

 of the Autocrateia in a very fanatical manner; and, with respect 

 to the latter, they have been involved in a humoral pathology 

 as much as the systematic physicians who had gone before them, 

 and with a theory so incorrect as not to merit now the smallest 

 attention. After all, I ought not to dismiss the consideration of 

 the Stahlian system without remarking that, as the followers of 

 this system were very intent upon observing the method of na- 

 ture, so they were very attentive in observing the phenomena of 

 diseases, and have given us in their writings many facts not to 

 be found elsewhere. 



While the doctrines of Stahl were prevailing in the university 

 of Halle, Dr. Hoffmann, a professor in the same university, 

 proposed a system that was very different. He received into his 

 system a great deal of the Mechanical, Cartesian, and Chemical 

 doctrines of the systems which had appeared before ; but, with 

 respect to these, it is of no consequence to observe in what man- 

 ner he modified the doctrines of his predecessors, as his improve- 

 ments in these respects were nowise considerable, and no part of 

 them now remain ; and the real value of his works, beyond what 

 I am just now going to mention, rests entirely on the many facts 

 they contain. The merit of Dr. Hoffmann and of his work is, 

 that he made, or rather suggested an addition to the system, 

 which highly deserves our attention. Of this I cannot give a 

 clearer account than by giving it in the author's own words. In 

 his Medicina Rationalis Systematica, torn. iii. sect. i. chap. 4. 

 he has given his " Genealogia morborum ex turbato solidorum et 

 fluidorum mechanismo ;" and in the 46th and last paragraph of 

 this chapter, he sums up his doctrine in the following words : 



