No. 387.| THE PRESENT STATUS OF ANATOMY. IQI 
schools, the Iatro-chemical and the Iatro-physical, which, as 
their names indicate, regarded the physiological processes of 
the body as chemical or physical in their nature. These 
theories were, however, too advanced for the times, and even 
Sylvius, the chief exponent of the chemical school, while 
regarding many diseases as the result of disturbances of 
the chemical processes of the body, still held to the idea 
of a spiritus when it was a question of nervous disturb- 
ances. 
Later, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Boer- 
haave emphasized the monistic views, and to a certain extent 
combined the principles of the two schools just mentioned by 
finding the causes of disease in the degree of cohesion of the 
particles composing the elementary fibres of the body and de- 
termining their strength or feebleness, their laxity or tense- 
ness, and in the chemical and physical characters of the body 
fluids, their acidity, alkalinity, or viscosity. And almost at the 
same time we find a revival of the dualistic idea in the animism 
of Stahl, who revived to a certain extent the Archeus of Para- 
celsus under the name of the “anima” as the controlling ele- 
ment of the physiological. processes of the body. 
But it would take too long to even merely touch upon the 
numerous theories which marked the eighteenth century as the 
age of systems. The desire then prevalent of establishing a 
general principle which would govern the practice of medicine 
seems to stand in close relation to the tendency to establish 
systems which became evident in the philosophy of the times, 
and, if time permitted, it would be interesting to consider the 
influence of such minds as Descartes and Leibnitz on the med- 
ical theories of their day. 
To a certain extent these various and vacillating theories 
retarded the progress of anatomy and physiology, but not 
entirely so. For a theory is merely a working hypothesis, an 
index of the lines along which further observation should pro- 
ceed, and so, even though it may be fundamentally erroneous, 
it need not necessarily obscure for long the progress of thought, 
the observation which it stimulates soon correcting it and sub- 
stituting for it more accurate ideas. The search for the elixir 
