252 Medicine, 



gestion of food, are signal examples of the delu^ 

 sion which then occupied the most respectable 

 minds. But no person at this period seems to have 

 proceeded further in this course than the celebrated 

 Dr. PiTCAiRN, who, during some of the last years 

 of the seventeenth century, held a medical profes- 

 sorship in the University of Leyden. He flattered 

 himself that medical principles might be supported 

 by a clear train of mathematical reasoning, which 

 \vould defy the attacks of the sophist, and which 

 would be exempt from the fluctuations of opinion 

 and prejudice. His works are full of postulates, 

 data and demonstrations. And, after a long parade 

 of geometrical forms, he supposes himself to have 

 arrived at the 7i€ plus ultra of the science of me- 

 dicine/' 



The mechanic theory of medicine is now so ob- 

 solete that even the most illiterate affect to smile 

 at the absurdities of that kind, which were often 

 uttered by learned men. But it should be remem- 

 bered that, amidst ail its extravagance, it was an 

 important step towards improvement; and it will 

 certainly be rescued from contempt by the recol- 

 lection that it was once honoured with the great 

 names of Borelli, Boerhaave and Newton. 



The Italian and Dutch schools, though hurried 

 into wild extremes by the rage of mathematical 

 reasoning which then prevailed, possessed an un- 

 rivalled celebrity at the end of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. The history of medicine at that period par- 

 ticularly dwells on the merits and services of many 

 of their physicians, and abundantly justifies their 

 claim to distinction. 



Thus stood the science of medicine at the be- 



h PiTCAiRN concludes his chapter, De divisione Morborum, thus trium- 

 phantly; " ^uapropter non duhito me sohnsse nob'ile proLlema, quod est, dato morhoy 

 invenlre reviedlum. Ja^nque opus exegi." Vide Elementa JVTediciva Physico- 

 Mathematical p. 177. The annals of science can scarcely furnish a more 

 striking example of the delusion of enthusiasm, or the blindness of prejudice. 



