Sect. III. J Theory and Practice of Physic. S 1 7 



maim by a few years, they were, as theorists of nie- 

 ilicine, strictly the contemporaries of Buerhaave. 

 It is judged expedient to begin with the latter in 

 this place, not only on account of the great impor- 

 tance and celebrity of his system, but because lii^ 

 doctrines held a closer -.dliance with the predomi- 

 nant philosoi)hy of that period, and those of the two 

 Others with the succeeding theories. 



Hermann Boerliaave began his career as a teacher 

 and a writer about the commencement of the eigh- 

 teenth century, in all respects he deserves to be 

 considered as one of the greatest men that ever 

 adorned the medical profession. He possessed a 

 vast range of erudition, and had cultivated the aux- 

 iliary branches ofmedicme with such assiduity, that 

 be particularly excelled in anatomy, chemistry, and 

 botany. No physician, since Galen, has so autho- 

 ritatively swayed the empire of opinion, nor been 

 more universally obeyed in the schools of ph\ sic. 

 Endowed by nature with a powerful, logical, and 

 s^'stematic mind, he seemed to be designed to clear 

 away the rubbish of errour and prejudice, with which 

 he foun^ medical learning overgrown ; to collect 

 knowledge from every source; and to present it to 

 the world embodied in that clear, consistent, elegant, 

 and luminous state of arrangement, which consti- 

 tutes him the parent of medical theory *. 



* This great man was bom at a vilhigo n^ar lA^ydcn, in the 

 year i06S, juid died in 1/38. The sparu whicii hu- tilled in the 

 seieiititic world, for upwards of forty years, vas so great, that nu 

 one acqnainted with the history of the period in w liich he lived 'a 

 jgnorant of his immense learning, his singular talents, or liis nu- 

 merous and inestimable woik^. His moral and religious character 

 is as worthv of commenioration as his iuteilettuul endowuwiKs, 



