[ i68 ] 



had ehofen the alphabetic if that deferves ths 

 name of an arrangement : others, after the ex- 

 ample of Aretaiis^ and CAius Aureliams^ had di- 

 vided difeafes, from their duration, into actitey 

 and chronical. Some had preferred the anatomical 

 order which, as it prefuppofes a knowledge of 

 the feat of the difeafe, mufl, not unfrequently, 

 prove fallacious : Sennertus's is an inftance of this 

 kind. However, the aitiological arrangement has 

 been moft followed by the beft writers among the 

 moderns ; fuch as Hoffmann^ and Boerhaave j al- 

 though perhaps not much lefs fallacious than the 

 anatomical, fince it is m many inftanccs founded 

 on an hypothecs of the writer : and though Fdi^^ 

 Platerus^ in his Praxis Medic a, publifhed in 1602, 

 had given an imiperfect flcetch of a nofology on 

 the fymptcjnatic plan, yet no writer ventured to 

 purfue his idea, for more than a century after his 

 time ; difcouraged as it fliould feem by the diffi- 

 culty of the attempt. At length the late profef- 

 for M. Sauvages of AIo-ntpeMer^ after communi- 

 cating his fcheme to Boerhaave^ publifhed in 1731, 

 in 12"?^ the outlines of fuch a work, under the 

 title of Nouvelks Qajfes des Maladies., in which he 

 profelTes to define difeafes, from their confiant and 

 evident fymptpms only. In the year 1763, the au- 

 thor augmented his work, by the addition of the 

 fpecies under each genus^ into 5 volumes in S^*'. 

 Sauvages may be confidered as having fpent his life 

 in giving to this defign a certain degree of perfec- 

 tion, having enlarged it into 2 quarto volumes, 

 iv^ which form- it v/as publifhed after his death ia 



1768. 



