346 THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND MEDICINE. 



strongly impressed was Descartes with this, that he re- 

 solved to spsnd the rest of his life in. trying to acquire 

 such a knowledge of nature as would lead to the con- 

 struction of a better medical doctrine.* The anti-Car- 

 tesians found material for cheap ridicule in these aspira- 

 tions of the philosopher ; and it is almost needless to say 

 that, in the thirteen years which elapsed between the 

 publication of the " Discours " and the death of Des- 

 cartes, he did not contribute much to their realisation. 

 But, for the next century, all progress in physiology 

 took place along the lines which Descartes laid down. 



The greatest physiological and pathological work of 

 the seventeenth century, Borelli's treatise " De Motu 

 Animalium," is, to all intents and purposes, a develop- 

 ment of Descartes' fundamental conception; and the 

 same may be said of the physiology and pathology of 

 Boerhaave, whose authority dominated in the medical 

 world of the first half of the eighteenth century. 



With the origin of modern chemistry, and of elec- 

 trical science, in the latter half of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, aids in the analysis of the phenomena of life, of 

 which Descartes could not have dreamed, were offered 

 to the physiologist. And the greater part of the gigan- 

 tic progress which has been made in the present century 

 is a justification of the prevision of Descartes. For it 

 consists, essentially, in a more and more complete reso- 

 lution of the grosser organs of the living body into 

 physico-chemical mechanisms. 



* "Discours de la Methode," 6 e partic, Ed. Cousin, pp. 193 and 211. 



