350 Medicine, [Chap. W. 



Beddoes was the first who introduced the pneu- 

 matic practice into Great Brttain, where it appears 

 to have been more assiduously cultivated, and ap- 

 ])lied to a greater variety of medical purposes, thai> 

 in any other country. The names of Davy, Thorn- 

 ton, and Townshend, are also to be mentioned 

 among the most enterprising cultivators and im 

 provers of this practice. The sanguine expecta- 

 tions of those who first proposed this mode of ap- 

 plying remedies seem hitherto scarcely to have been 

 answered ; but how far industry and ingenuity may 

 hereafter vary and improve the practice must be 

 left to the decision of time. 



The methodical arrangement of diseases, called 

 Nosology, had its birth in the eighteenth century. 

 This consists in a systematic distribution of dis- 

 eases into classes, orders, genera, and species, on 

 the plan of natural history. This scheme of ar- 

 rangement was first conceived by Sydenham, and 

 afterwards by Baglivi, towards the close of the 

 seventeenth century. For the first actual attempt 

 the world is indebted to Francois Boissier de Sau- 

 vages, an eminent professor of medicine at Mont- 

 pellier, who published his laborious work in the 

 early part of the eighteenth century. After Sau- 

 vages, this subject was cidtivated by Linnaeus, to 

 whose genius for arrangement every branch of 

 natural history is so greatly indebted ; by Rodoi- 

 l)hMS Augustus Vogel, of Goettingen; by John 

 Baptist Sagar, of Iglaw, in Moravia; by Dr. Cul- 

 leii, of Edinburgh; by Dr. Macbride, of Dublin; 

 and by Dr. Darwin, in his Zoonomia; beside 

 some others of inferior" note. For some time past, 

 tlie iniluence of Nosology has been evidently on 



