550 Medicine, {Chap, IV. 



The theory of diseases last stated formed tlie 

 ground-work of a system which was adopted and 

 taught for many years, with great celebrity, by the 

 learned Dr. Culien of Edinburgh *. He assumed the 

 genera] principle of Hollmann, that the phenomena 

 of health and disease can only be explained by re- 

 ferring them to the state and affections of the pri- 

 mary moving powers of the animal economy. He 

 endeavoured to extend the application and uses of 

 this principle as far as possible, and for this pur- 

 pose he- expunged certain hypothetical doctrines of 

 the humoral pathology which Hoffmann had suf- 

 fered to remain j and to depreciate the Mtlue of 

 his system. 



According to the hypothesis embraced by Dr. 

 Cullen, the bra hi, with all its ramifications and de- 

 pendencies combined to form the nervous system, is 

 the primary organ of the human body, the different 

 conditions of which constitute the various states of 

 health and disease. In pursuance of this hypo- 

 thesis, the circulation of the blood, instead of being 

 the principal of the vital functions, as in the Boer- 



tion of a spasfnodic state of the extreme vessels in the cold stage 

 offerers, commonly ascribed to Dr. Iloffmann, was first naade by 

 Dr. Pien>, in his comprehensive treatise De Febrt." 



* Dr. William Cullen was born in Lanarkshire, in the west of 

 Scotland, December 11, 1/12. He was chosen one of the me- 

 dical protessors in tlie university of Edinburgh in 1756^ and died 

 in that city in l/.qo, in the 77th year of his age. The various 

 publications of this distinguished physician are so well known, 

 that it is nn!iccessary to dwell on their merits. Of these, his 

 Noxologia Mt'thodica, his First Lines of the Practice of Pli^s/c, 

 and his Materia Medica, arc the most valuable. — See an elo- 

 quent and interesting luulogiuia upon Dr. Callcn, pronounced 

 liefore the College jof Physicians of Philadelphia^ by Dr. llui,h, 

 bvo, 1790. 



