MEDICAMENTS AND LIFE. 211 



Ipecacuanha was brought to France, and there used for 

 the first time, in 1672, by a doctor named Legras, on his 

 return from Brazil. He did not succeed in bringing into 

 repute the powerful purgative and vomitive properties of 

 that root. A few years later, another physician, of much 

 greater enterprise, Adrian Helvetius, resolved to build his 

 fortune on this drug. He posted placards in the streets 

 of Paris, announcing an unfailing specific for the dysentery. 

 By a lucky coincidence for him, several gentlemen of the 

 court, and the dauphin himself, Louis XIV.'s son, were at 

 the time suffering from that disease. The king, told by 

 Colbert of Helvetius's secret, directed one of his physicians 

 to enter into arrangements with the owner of the specific. 

 The drug was first tried in the wards of 1'Hotel-Dieu. As 

 soon as its efficacy was well established, they paid Helve- 

 tius one thousand louis d'or, with the added advantage of 

 those medical honors to which they proposed later to raise 

 him. Ipecac was spread very rapidly throughout France 

 and the rest of Europe. Leibnitz himself thought it not 

 beneath him to speak warmly in its praise. It must be 

 observed, too, that all the great metaphysicians busied 

 themselves with medicine. Descartes, Malebranche, and 

 Berkeley, were not only practised in that science, but also 

 devoted to it a part of their progressive meditations, and 

 even their experiments. Under their influence, studies in 

 medicine attained new exactness and activity. The meth- 

 ods and systems of physics and chemistry were introduced 

 into biology ; the composition of the forces, and the struct- 

 ure of the organs of the system, were studied. Philosophy, 

 entering into medicine, imparted to it ardor in research 

 and the passion for light. Let us not forget that the spec- 

 ulations of the seventeenth century are the real starting- 

 point of that magnificent labor of expansion in the sciences 

 of which this era and the following one present the spec- 

 tacle. 



