VOL. LXXVIII.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 367 



whose institution, to me, has always seemed to include the philosophy, but not 

 the actual practice, of medicine. 



Medicine is a science of long cultivation in that channel in which all the 

 sciences have flowed, and had early attained great perfection, I believe, from the 

 testimony of various writers of antiquity, and other circumstances: for though 

 Celsus observes well, that there could be no physicians among the Greeks at the 

 time of the Trojan war, inasmuch as Homer never mentions one medicine, but 

 only application to the gods for the cure of fevers, and other internal diseases; 

 yet the Egyptians, from whom the Greeks received a great part of their know- 

 ledge in all science, as well as in medicine, had certainly not only regular phy- 

 sicians for internal diseases, but also stone-cutters, oculists, aurists, &c. long 

 before the Trojan war; and Hippocrates, by his own testimony, took much of 

 his knowledge from what he calls the ancients. In the progress therefore of 

 the science of medicine, it came into my mind to inquire how far, and on what 

 ground, the modern increase of science in anatomy, chemistry, mathematics, &c. 

 had forwarded the knowledge of medicine. In the first place, it is well known 

 that medicine was in the hands of Greek physicians from the time of Hippocrates, 

 or rather from the destruction of the Egyptian monarchy by Cambyses, down 

 to the time of the Crusades; in all this time there was hardly a dissection of the 

 human body, from an opinion about manes; but when it came into Europe 

 again, where this opinion remained indeed, but in a much less degree, anatomy 

 began again to flourish ; and by other means all the other sciences shone forth 

 with a greater lustre than they had ever done in any period handed down to us by 

 the history of any nation. It was obvious therefore to conceive, that the know- 

 ledge of the structure of the body, and the investigation of the powers of matter, 

 made in a more accurate manner, and on a more extensive scale, would elucidate 

 the doctrine of the human body, and its diseases, and their treatment, in a new 

 and more perfect manner : to this opinion I mean now to apply the reasoning I 

 have before laid down. 



In the structure and physiology of the body, 2 great discoveries have been 

 made by the moderns ; the circulation of the blood ; and the lymphatics and ab- 

 sorption of the lymph. These at once overthrow the ideas of the ancients with 

 regard to most of the functions of the interior parts of the body ; which was 

 now conceived by many to be an hydraulic machine, and subject to all those 

 disorders which were incidental to such a machine ; and particularly, from 

 various fluids flowing with great rapidity, through tubes, many of them of in- 

 finite fineness, that stoppages must often take place, which were to be removed 

 by dissolving out the obstructing matter ; that the blood was mixed so perfectly 

 through all the body, and so constantly, that the same blood must be taken 

 away, whatever blood-vessel was opened ; and when we contemplate the nume- 



