f62 Medlcma. 



titioner and author, enjoyed a splendid reputation, 

 and added greatly to the mass of medical science. 



Hoffman had the discernment early to perceive 

 the error of those who suffered themselves to be 

 led away by the hypothetical doctrines of the Im- 

 moral pathology, and the other wild opinions then 

 prevailing among the chemical and mechanical 

 theorists. He set himself to cultivate and improve 

 what BoERHAAVE had neglected. He diligently 

 undertook to explore the functions and diseases of 

 the 7ie7^voiis system, and wisely concluded that 

 noxious causes much more generally affect the 

 solid moving powers than the fluids of the animal 

 body. He admitted, indeed, into his system some 

 portion of the mechanical, Cartesian and chemical 

 doctrines which had previously prevailed; but 

 these did not blind him to the light which he de- 

 rived from the pathology of the nervous system. 

 According to him, atony and spasm are the great 

 sources of disease ; and he proceeded so far as to 

 maintain that ail internal disorders are to be 

 ascribed to some preternatural affection of the liv- 

 ing solid.'" 



Hoffman's pathology of fever deservedly ex- 

 cited great attention. Though he undertook, like 

 many of his predecessors, to inquire into the in- 

 tentions of nature, he certainly contemplated her 

 process in fever with more sagacity, and rejecting 

 chemical and mechanical analogies on this subject, 

 endeavoured to discover the cause of fever in tlie 

 peculiar nature and affections of the vital motions. 

 He supposed the noxious cause producing fever, 

 (in the language of the schools, the remote cause) 

 to operate first on the living solids, producing a 

 general spasm of the nervous and fibrous system, 

 beginning in the external parts, and proceeding 



m Vide Fred. Hoffman. Opera Omnia Physko-Medica, vol. i, J\de(^^ 

 Rat. System, tom. iii. § I. cap. iv. p. 308. Geneva editifiii. 



