232 ON THE VAGARIES OP MEDICINE. 



and Galen, of Rhages and Avicenna, are transcripts of animal life in 

 our own day. The extensive families of fevers and spasmodic affec- 

 tion are, in the main, the same now as they are represented to us by 

 the most ancient writings that have descended to us, — with, however, 

 this improvement, that cases requiring then from three to six months 

 for a cure, now take only as many weeks, and three to six weeks novo 

 get their quietus in as many days. The great lesson which experience 

 has taught has been physiological, and consequently the course of 

 treatment has become more positive and definite, hence the more favor- 

 able result. From Hippocrates we have the first link supplied by 

 Galen to the end of the Greek Schools — Celsus then furnishes the 

 Italian. The Schools of Bagdad by Serapion, and through the 

 Monks till about the time of Sydenham, all of whose works are handed 

 down to us and translated into our language, and the whole of the 

 schools represented by these writers were united upon what is called 

 the Humoral Pathology of disease — the same as is taught by the 

 schools of medicine at the present day. 



Mr. Jeaflferson, in his book He Doctoribus, says the lives of three 

 physicians, Sydenham, Sir Hans Sloane, and Heberden, completely 

 bridge over the uncertain period between old empiricism and modern 

 science. Sydenham was born in 1624, and received the most impor- 

 tant part of his education in the University of Oxford. Sir Hans 

 Sloane continued till 1 753 — his museum was purchased by the British 

 Government and became the nucleus of the present British Museum. 

 Heberden extended the time to the beginning of the present century 

 and was the instigator of the transactions of the College of Physicians, 

 to the first volume of which he was the chief contributor. 



I will only refer to one or two instances to show the scientific ap- 

 plication of medicines for the relief of disease : First, — Affections of 

 the liver or bilious complaints, as they are called, and peculiar to this 

 country. 



A secretion of this organ called hepatine is readily changed into 

 sugar by the disturbance of particular nervous functions, or interrup- 

 tions of the circulation of the blood through the vena-porta. Now 

 this occurs in all cases of biliary calculi or obstructions of the biliary 

 ducts, rendering the most trifling derangement of the liver a cause of 

 this nonazotic, unfibrous and most abnormal secretion. Now, not 

 one of the theories named, could, as such, directly have the slightest 

 effect in removing or changing this sugar from the blood, yet to the 



