Medicine. 251 



dicai theory had attained its greatest height. The 

 mathematicians were aUke hostile to the Galenists 

 and Chemists. AVith equal aversion they discarded 

 the qualities, elements, temperaments, concoctiom 

 and crises o^xh^ Galenist; and the Ai'dueus of Van 

 Helmont, the salts, the sidphiir, the mercury, the 

 ncids, alkalies, effervescences, fermentations, ebul- 

 iitions and deflagrations of the Chemist. Instead 

 .of such objects as these, the mathematical patho- 

 logists endeavoured to direct the public attention 

 to mechanical tension and relaxationy to true and 

 spurious plethora, to obstruction and error loci, to 

 excessive or deficient motion of the fluids, and to 

 their lentor, tenuity or dissolution. Flushed with 

 their success in astronomical inquiries, and with 

 their dominion over the globe we inhabit, the 

 Mathematicians confidently imagined they should 

 find no difficulty in subjecting the province of me- 

 dicine to their extensive empire. The Chemists of 

 that day had little to urge against the claims of 

 these invaders. Their loose, visionary and capri- 

 cious doctrines (for such was undoubtedly much 

 of the chemistry of that period) could make no 

 successful opposition to the axioms, postulateSy 

 propositions, lemmas, problems, theorems^ demon- 

 strations, corollaries, and calculations, with which 

 the mathematicians were constantly armed when 

 they entered into controversy. Bellini, of Flo- 

 rence, as was formerly observed, was among the 

 first medical writers who introduced mechanical 

 reasoning; and soon afterwards the application of 

 it was extended still further by Professor Borellt, 

 who prosecuted the subject with great learning and 

 zeal. The laborious calculations made by these 

 mathematicians of the force exerted by tlie heart in 

 propelling the blood,^ and by the stomach in the di- 



g BoRELLi believed that he made It clearly to appear, that the force of 

 the heart is equal to i^o^ooo pounds weight; while Dr, Keil's calculation 

 reduces the power of the left ventricle to fvc i'.n:es. 



