BROW N. 



lud not pr..baU!v l.oforo tl.oHijh. ot. iorti;nung his cnuii- 

 von ti. profit. On tl.c llrcngth ot liie th.iraacr procured 

 him by lliis pcrfurmance, lie retiiriKd to EUinburgli, deter- 

 mined to apply to the Itiidy of m.'dicir.e. " He had now," 

 he faid. " dilcovered his lli-englh, at'd was ambuioiis ot riding 

 ill his L-amaL'e as a phvlieiaii." At the opcnirjj of the fef- 

 ton he adJrelTcd Latin letters to each ot the protellois, 

 who' readilv gave liim tickets of admilTion to their kdnris, 

 which he Attended diligently (ov feveral years ; in the inte- 

 rim teachii!' Latin to fuch of tlie pupils as app;ied, and 

 3ff\'\\ni then? in writing their thefes, or turning them into 

 Latin The price, when he compofed the thciis, was ten 

 ..iiincas; when he tranllated their conipolitions into Latin, 

 Jive If he had been no«- prudent, or had not indulged in 

 the "moll drilruftive exeeffes.hc might, it is probable, in a 

 few years have attained the eminence he promilcd hindelt ; 

 but he marred all hv his inttmp;;rance. In no long tiiric 

 a^ttr tbi.;, hisconibtution, which had been hardv and robiilt, 

 became drbuitateii, and he had the face and appearance of a 

 worn-out debauchee. His bad habits had not, however, 

 prevented h's gettipg the friendfliip or afl'iHance of Dr. Cul- 

 len, wh-i. delVrous of availing hmifelf ot his talents, em- 

 ployed him as a tutor to his ions, and made ufe of him as 

 an afrulant in his leaures ; Brown repealing to his pupils, 

 in the evening, the lednre they had heard in the morning, 

 and explaining to them f'.ich pirts as wer^- abthufc and dit- 

 (icult. In I7^<; lie mar icd, and took a huu'e, which was 

 foon lulled with bosrder-^ ; but continuing his improvident 

 courle, he became a bankrupt at the end of th;ee or four 

 years He now became a candidate tor one ot the medical 

 chair^, but failed ; and as he attributed his miffing this pro- 

 motion to Dr. CuUen, he very muidvifedly broke oft his 

 conncftion with him, and became the declared enemy tohmi, 

 and his fyllcm ; which he had always before ftrenuoiifiy de- 

 fended. This probably determined him to form a ntw fyf- 

 tcm of medicine, doubtlcfs meaning to annihilate that of his 

 former patron. As he had read but few medical books, 

 and was but little verfcd in practice, his theory mufl have 

 been rather the refult of contemplation, than ot experience. 

 That in forming it, he was influenced by his attachment to 

 fpirituous liquors, feems probable from internal evidence, 

 and from the tfrecls he attributed to them of diminifliing 

 the number, as well as the fevcrity of the tits of the gout, 

 under which he fiiffered. He always found them more 

 fevcre and frequent, he fays, when he lived abftemioully. 

 One of his pupils informed Dr. Beddoes, " that he was 

 ufed, before he began to read his ledure, to take fifty drops 

 of laudanum in a glafs of whillty ; repeating the dole four 

 or live times during the Icfture. Between the tffefts of 

 thcfc (limulants, and voluntary exertions, li« foon waxed 

 warm, and by degrees his imagination was exalted into 

 phrtnzy." His intention feems to have been to limplify 

 medicine, and to render the knowledge of it ealily attain- 

 able, w ithout the labour of lludying other authors. All 

 general, or univerfal difeafes, were therefore reduced by him 

 to two great families or clafTes, the fthenic and the atlhe- 

 nic ; the former depending upon excefs, the latter upon 

 deficiency of exciting power. The former were to be re- 

 inoved by debilitating, the latter by llinnilant medicines, of 

 which the moll valuable and powerful are wine, brandy, and 

 opium." As allhenic difeafes are more numerous, and occur 

 much more frequently than thofe from an oppofite caufe, 

 his opportunities of calhng in the aid of thefe powerful llimuli 

 were proportionately numerous. " Spafmodic and convul- 

 five diforders, and even hemorrhages," he fays, " were found 

 to proceed from debiLty ; and -wine, and brandy, which had 

 been thought hurtful in thefe difeafes, he found the moll 



powerful of all remedies in removing them." Whence 

 had completed his plan, he publilhed his theory, or fyllem, 

 under the title of " Elemcnta Medicince," from his preface 

 to which the prccedintr quotations have been principally 

 taken. Though he luui been eleven or twelve years at Edin- 

 burgh, he had not taken his degree of doftor ; and as he 

 wras now at variance with all the medical profellors, not 

 thinking it prudent to offer hi-iifelf there, he went to St. 

 Andrew's, where he was readily admitted to tint honour. 

 He now commenced public teacher of medicine, making 

 his Elemcnta his text book ; and convinced, as it feems, of 

 the foundnefs of his dodtrine, he exultingly demands (pre- 

 face to a new edition of the tranflatioii of his Elemcnta, by 

 Dr. Beddoes) whether the medical art hitherto conjeftuial, 

 incoherent, and in the great body of its doflrines falfe, was 

 not at lail reduced to a fcience of demonllration, which 

 might be called the fcience of life." His method in giving 

 his leclures was, firll to tranflate the text book, fentence by 

 fentcncc, and then to expitiate upon the paflage. The 

 novelty of the dotlrine procured him at tirll a pretty nume- 

 rous ciafs of pupils ; but as he was irregular in his attend- 

 ance, and his habits of drinking iucieafed upon him, they 

 were foon reduced in number, and he becime fo involved in 

 his circuinflaiices, that it became iiecefTary for him to quit 

 Edinburgh ; he therefore cime to London in the autumn of 

 the year 1786. Here, for a time, he was received with 

 favour; but his irregularities in living increaling upon him, 

 he came to his lodgings, in the evening of the 8th of Oclober 

 in 17S8, intoxicated, and taking, as it was his cullom, a 

 large dofe of laudanum, he died in the courfe of the night, 

 before he had entered on his career of leAuring, for which 

 he was making preparations. He had the preceding year 

 publifhed " Oblcrvations on the old Syltems of Phyhc," as 

 a prelude to the introduftion of his own ; but it was little 

 noticed. His opinions have, however, met with patrons in 

 Germany and Italy, as well as in this country, and feveral 

 volumes have been written on tlie fubjeft of them ; but they 

 are now pretty generally, and defervedly, abandoned. Bed- 

 does' edition of John Brown's tranflation of his Elcmenta 

 Medicine, 1795. 



Brown, John, an ingenious artifl and elegant fcholar, 

 was born at Edinburgh in 1752, and dcilined to the profef- 

 lion of a painter. Whillt he was at Rome, he became ac- 

 quainted with Sir William Young and Mr. Townley, and 

 accompanied them, as a draftfman, into Sicily. In this 

 itland he was employed in taking feveral fine views of its 

 antiquities, which were exquilltely finifhed, and preferved 

 the appropriate character ot the buildings which he intended 

 to reprefent. Upon his return to his native town, after a 

 relldence in Italy of more than ten years, he gained the 

 elleem of many literary perfons by his elegant manners and 

 inftruflive converfation on various fubjefts of art, and par- 

 ticularly on mulic, of which his knowledge was very exten- 

 tive and accurate. He was particularly dillinguifhtd by the 

 attention of lord Monboddo, who, in the fourth volume 

 of the " Origin and Progrefs of Language," reprefests 

 him as eminently (killed in the arts of painting, fculpture, 

 mufic, and poetry : nor was he lefs deferving of rcfpedl for his 

 moral qualities tlian for hishterary attainments. In 178(5 he 

 vifited London, where he was much employed as a painter 

 of fmall portraits with black lead pencil, which, belides 

 being correftly dravyn, faithfully exhibited the features and 

 charafter of the perfons whom they reprefented. Death, 

 however, deprived the public of this ingenious artift in 1 787, 

 by the progrefs of a difeafe, which he bore with a firmnefs 

 of mind that had marked his charafter through life. Soon 

 after his death, his " Letters on the Poetry and Mufic of 



ihc 



