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SOLIDISM. 



Themison established the principle^ that the fibre com- 

 posiDg different textures was in one of two opposite states : 

 one state was that of tension, which indicated sensibility, or 

 irritability ; the other state represented debility ; and that 

 excess of either condition constituted disease. 



These ideas were renewed by Baylini, CuUen, and 

 Hoffman. With them were afterwards amalgamated the 

 vital properties of Haller : for subsequent discoveries in 

 pathological anatomy had shown that diseases had their 

 seats in the organized solids. Three doctrines became based 

 upon the principles of the solid Pathology : viz., those of 

 Brown, Pinel, and Broussais. 



According to Brown, life is maintained but by stimulants. 

 The faculty of nerves to receive impressions, constitutes 

 excitability or irritability of fibre. Stimulants are either 

 internal or external : the first are mental emotions, func- 

 tional duties, muscular action ; the second are external 

 bodies, whether ponderable or imponderable, or in any state. 

 When these affect the economy, they are called general 

 excitants — when parts only, local excitants. Life and health 

 being influenced by stimulants — which when too strong 

 produce inflammatory disorders, when too weak cause debility 

 — the accumulation of excitability, its expenditure, repara- 

 tion, and exhaustion, are the physiological conditions to 

 which recourse is had to explain the phenomena of disease^ 

 Their distribution and concentration, also their change of 

 seat, are explained by the facility with which excitement is 

 shifted, and by the readiness of other parts to receive it. 

 Brown called predisposition to disorder an intermediate 

 state between health and disease. The sthenic diathesis is 

 the predisposition to inflammatory disease, occasioned by an 

 excess of excitability — the asthenic diathesis, or predisposi- 

 tion to debilitating disorder, owing to a diminution of all 

 excitability. Brown's therapeutics consisted in combating, 

 with debilitants, diseases of an inflammatory tendency -, and 

 with excitants, those of a debilitating character. The choice 



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