322 Medicine. {CnAr.IV. 



though he lived almost forty years after he had 

 formed it, he seems to have made in all that time 

 but iGW corrections or additions which can be 

 thought to be of any moment. 



The next medical theorist whose system demands 

 notice is George Ernest Stahl, professor of medi- 

 cine at Halle, in Saxony, who was so illustriously 

 distinguished for his improvements in chemistry, 

 mentioned in a former part of this work. For a 

 long time his was the prevailing system in Ger- 

 many; and the traces of it may be discerned in 

 many modern writings, which still maintain a high 

 degree of authority. 



The fundamental principle of this system is, that 

 the rational soul of man presides over and governs 

 the whole economy of his body both in health and 

 sickness. In all ages physicians have supposed the 

 existence of a power or faculty in the animal eco- 

 nomy, by which it is enabled to resist injuries^ and 

 to correct and remove the diseases to which it is ex- 

 posed. This power by many of the ancients, w^as 

 vaguely termed nature, and, under the dcnomina* 

 tiori. of vis conservatrix ei medicatrix natura, has 

 been long celebrated in the schools of medicine. 



Stahl explicitly founds his system on the principle 

 that this power of nature, so much spoken of, is no-- 

 thing else than a faculty of the rational soul *. On 



* It appears that physicians are by no means unanimous in 

 their mode of understanding the Stahlian tlieory. In proof of 

 this the follouing quotation is offered from a writer of high repu- 

 tation. " Stahl has been reproached for having ascribed too much 

 to the soul 5 but they who have done this, eitlier have never read 

 liis works, or did not understand them. The soul, according to 

 Staid, in a being purely materiiU ; or ratlier he adiuilfteu no i>uii\. 



