514 Medic inc. [Chap. IV. 



remedies, intended to promote imaginary depura- 

 tions, by additional heat and increased stimulus, a 

 5"afer antiphlogisiic or cooling plan was adopted, 

 with a view to unload the oppressed habit, to reduce 

 excessive action, and to preservp the strength of 

 the system for the subsequent conflict. 



Towards the close of the seventeenth century, 

 the application of mathematical reasoning to medi- 

 cal theory had attained its greatest height. Tlie 

 mathematicians were alike hostile to the Galenists 

 and chemists. With equal aversion they discarded 

 the qualities^ elements^ temper aments, concoctionSy 

 and crises of the Galenist ; and the Arclueus of Van 

 llelmont, the salts^ the sulphur, the mercury, the 

 acids, alkalies, effervescences, fermentations, ebulli-* 

 tionSy and deflagrations of the chemist. Instead of 

 such objects as these, the mathematical pathologists 

 endeavoured to direct the public attention to me- 

 chanical tensioji and relaxation, 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 ^^'e inhabit, the mathematicians 

 confidently imagined they should fmd no difficul- 

 ty in subjecting the province of medicine to their 

 extensive empire. The chemists of that day had 

 little to urge against the claims of these invaders. 

 Their loose, visionary, and capricious doctrines 

 (for such was undoubtedly much of the chemistry 

 of that })eriod) could make no successful opposition 

 to the axioms, postulates, propositions, lemmas, pro^ 

 blems, theorc/ns, demonstrations, corollaries, and 

 calculations, Avith which the mathematicians were 



