130 DR seller's memoir OF THE 



crease its own pain, and in the end prove more hurtful than beneficial ; for these 

 motions do not proceed, as the followers of Stahl have imagined, from any 

 rational views in the mind, or a consciousness that the welfare of the Ijody 

 demands them, but are an immediate consequence of the disagreeable perception 

 which excites it into action.'"* " He is more explicit still," Cullen continues 

 in his " Treatise upon Vital Motions," " where he considers the share the mind has 

 in producing motions : ' The mind, in carrying on the vital and other involuntary 

 motions, does not act as a rational but as a sentient principle, which, without 

 reasoning, is as certainly determined, by an ungrateful sensation or stimulus 

 affecting the organs, to exert its power in bringing about these motions, as is a 

 scale which, by mechanical laws, turns with the greatest weight.' "'f " This,'' 

 adds Cullen, " is establishing in the strongest manner a physical necessity in 

 this communication between the mind and body ; and I say, indeed, that this has 

 been the most common opinion among physicians." :}: Again, in his notes of a 

 clinical lecture for the month of December 1765, Dr Cullen, in alluding to the 

 progress which had been made in the investigation of the laws of the nervous 

 system, in the states of health and disease, and to the share which Whytt 

 had taken in it, observes : " Helmont, Willis, Baglivi, Wepfer, Hoffmann, 

 Haller, and Gaubius, have all done something, but Dr Whytt more than all, 

 though he has not exhausted the subject, nor removed every diflBculty." § Dr 

 John Thomson, to whom the medical profession is indebted for the imblication of 

 this passage, expresses his own sentiments of Whytt in the following words : — 

 •' Notwithstanding any errors in theory which he may have committed, the writ- 

 ings of this author display an extensive acquaintance with the phenomena of 

 health and disease, habits of accurate observation, and a talent for abstract rea- 

 soning and philosophical analysis, not surpassed by any of those who have been 

 employed in investigating the laws by which the economy of living systems is 

 governed." || 



There is nothing which more signally distinguishes Whytt's writings than 

 clear conception, lucid statement, and sound sense. He never wanders from the 

 point under consideration. He does not indeed refuse to exhibit what he wishes 

 to enforce in several lights, with the view of discovering in which of these it will 

 best gain the reader's assent, but he is never led away from his purpose by any 

 desire of shining, by any love of the fanciful, or by any hankering after paradox. 

 He proceeds straight to the object he has in his mind. His stjde is well suited 

 to his subject, — pure, unaffected, energetic, and, as one of his English contempo- 

 raries before quoted remarks, particularly free from Scottish peculiarities. He 



* Works, p. 520. t Ibid. p. 152. 



+ Thomson's " Cullen," vol. i. p. 19. § Thomson's " Life of Cullen, ' i. p. 258. 



11 Ibid., i. p. 258. 



