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 !’Hétel-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. 
