564 Mectklnf. 



indeed, have gone so far as to pronounce him the 

 author of the spasmodic theory of freer ; but what- 

 ever intimations he may be supposed to have given 

 of febrile spasm in different parts of his huge in- 

 digested work, they are surely too crude and in- 

 distinct to be considered in the light of a theory of 

 fever. Dr. Willis, in the latter part of the seven- 

 teenth century, had also laid some foundation for 

 this doctrine, in his Fathologia Cerebri et Ner- 

 vorum j and Baglivi, in the beginning of the 

 eighteenth, had improved it still further in his 

 Specimen de Fibra Motrici et Morbosaf 



The theory of diseases last stated formed the 

 ground-work of a system which w^as adopted and 

 taught for many years, with great celebrity, by 

 the learned Dr. Cullen, of Edinburgh. He as- 

 sumed the' general principle of Hoffman, that 

 the phenomena of health and disease can only be 

 explained by referring them to the state and affec- 

 tions of the primary moving powers of the animal 

 economy. He endeavoured to extend the appli- 

 cation and uses of this principle as far as possible; 

 and for this purpose he expunged certain hypo- 

 thetical doctrines of the humoral pathology, w^hich 

 Hoffman had suffered to remain, and to depre- 

 ciate the value of his system. 



According to the hypothesis embraced by Dr. 

 Cullen, the brain, with all its ramifications and 

 dependencies combined to form the nervous sys- 

 tem, is the primary organ of the human body, 

 whose different conditions constitute the various 

 states of health and disease. In pursuance of this 

 hypothesis, the circulation of the blood, instead 

 of being the principal of the vital functions, as in 



Dr. Ferrtar, of Manchester, in the preface to his Medieal Historief 

 and Refections^ makes the following remark : " The assertion of a spas- 

 modic state of the extreme vessels in the cold stage of fevers, commonly 

 ascribed to Dr. Hoffman, was first made by Dr. Piens, in his compre- 

 hensive treatise De Febra'^ 



