132 
tinned to prevail until the dowtifal of the P.o 
man empire. The seat of learning now be- 
came the theatre of war, and the arts of 
peace took refuge in the Eastern nations. 
The Arabian succeeded to the Greek, and 
Roman physicians, and still further obscured j 
tire theories of medicine by the introduction 1 
of fresh absurdities. Anatomy was totally | 
neglected, or at least not in any measure ad- 
vanced, by the Saracens: they made some 
progress in the science of botany, and intro- 
duced several new drugs, principally of the | 
aromatic kind, from the East, which retain 
still a place in the materia medica. 
Th 3 mention of a singular . controversy j 
which occurred among the Arabian physi- : 
cians, may serve to indicate the complexion j 
of tiie times in relation to the dogmas and j 
practice of physic. 
Hippocrates had directed that in pleurisy j 
blood should be drawn from the arm of that 
side which might be principally affected. 
Some of the Arabians contended that it should j 
be taken from the side opposite ; and such j 
was the medical ignorance and fanaticism of 
the age, that a decree was issued from the 
university of Salamanca in Spain, forbidding 
any one to pursue the practice of Hippoera- I 
tes. The members of this university even 
endeavoured to procure an edict from the 
emperor Charles V. to confirm their autho- 
rity, alleging, that the practice they op- 
posed was no less pernicious to medicine than 
'.Luther’s heresy had been to religion ! , 
From the time of the decay of learning to 
the commencement of the 16th century, the 
history of medicine furnishes no particulars 1 
of interest. ■ This last is the period which 
gave birth to the celebrated Paracelsus. ! 
Now, all the facts and doctrines of medicine ! 
came to be- explained by, and founded upon, 
imaginary principles of chemical philosophy. 
The antient authors fell into disrepute ; and 
the elements, qualities, and temperaments of 
the Greeks, were melted down and dissipated 
rn, the laboratory of the chemist. Fermen- 
tation, effervescence, ebullition, and defla- 
gration with salts, sulphur, alkali, and mer- 
cury, came now to be familiarly, but without 
any precise signification, introduced among 
the terms of the medical art. With several, 
however, the Galenic philosophy continued 
to prevail. 
'In the year 1628, Dr. W. Harvey, of 
London, first demonstrated and communi- 
cated to the world the most important fact of 
the. circulation of the blood. , This discovery 
afforded a new foundation for the whole 
structure of medical and physiological rea- 
soning. Even this, like all other improve- 
ments in science, and bold innovations of 
established doctrines, met with very cold 
encouragement by the contemporaries of 
Harvey.' It is said that no physician or 
teacher of medicine, who had attained his 
40th year, would subscribe to the fact ; and 
that in thus, conferring an incalculable benefit 
on the community, Harvey diminished his 
■own contemporary reputation, and nearly 
lost his practice as a physician. 
While some were industriously endeavour- 
ing to controvert the fact, others were busied 
in attempts’ to wrest the discovery from its 
author. 
Servitus, a native of Spain, had, many 
years previous to the time of Harvey, pub- 
MEDICINE. 
i 
lished a Treatise on Medicine trad Theology. 
In this work it is asserted, or rather perhaps 
conjectured, that the blood, by some un- 
known channel, passes from the pulmonary 
arteries into the veins. Even allowing that 
this intimation justly laid claim to the title of 
a discovery, it is merely a discovery of the 
passage of the blood through the lungs, and 
could in. no measure interfere with the merit 
or be regarded as an anticipation of the Ilar- 
veyian doctrine. 
The period, however, had not yet arrived 
when a rational use was to be made of the 
important fact in question. As the alche- 
mists had derided the Galenists, so the rea- 
sonings of the latter were now to give way to 
the mathematical sect of physicians, who by 
axioms, postulata, theorems, problems, ex- 
periments, ail’d corollaries, (“ a capite ad 
calcem armalos, et necem undique minitan- 
tes,”) attempted to explain, in the most futile 
manner, the functions of life, and to regulate 
the remedial process. 
The learned and industrious Boerhaave, 
of Leyden, whose name stands conspicuous 
in the annals of medicine, at length attempt- 
ed to restore the authority of the antient 
writings ; and by uniting the doctrines of 
Hippocrates with the philosophy of the times, 
lie framed a theory of medicine upon the 
supposition of acrimony, lentor, and other 
changes in the circulating fluids. From 
these changes lie inferred the origin of all 
disease; and the process of cure is, accord- 
ing to Boerhaare, either the process of cor- 
recting or expelling acrimony from the body, 
or the correction of morbid viscidity or tenu- 
ity in the humours. Boerhaave has, there- 
fore, been considered the founder of the hu- 
moral pathology ; a pathology which even to 
this day retains a material influence on the 
opinions, the phraseology, and the practice 
at least of the vulgar. 
Contemporary with Boerhaave was the il- 
lustrious Hoffman, a German professor, and 
founder of a medical system. Dr. Siaald hav- 
j ing first suggested, or rather borrowed from 
\ the antients, the idea of the rational soul of 
| man governing and directing the whole eco- 
nomy of his body, and obviating the adverse 
I tendency of noxious agents by exciting such 
1 actions in the system as are calculated to 
! effect their expulsion, or destroy their ma- 
lignity ; Hoffman endeavoured to demon- 
j strate, that the first operation of the causes 
i creating disease was the production of uni- 
! versal atony or spasm in the primary moving 
powers of the system, and did not consist of 
changes produced either in the quantity or 
quality of the humours or fluids of the body, 
as taught by the celebrated Boerhaave. 
The humoral, however, continued to pre- 
vail over the pathology of Hoffman ; and 
Dr. Cullen informs us, that “ when he came 
to take a professor’s chair in the university of 
Edinburgh, he found the Boerhaavian system 
then in its full force.” In framing a system 
of his own, Dr. Cullen reverted to the theory 
of Hoffman ; and indeed the whole of his pa- 
thology, as far as it relates to leading syste- 
matic doctrines, is scarcely any thing more 
than an attempt to unite the hypothesis of 
Hoffman with the Stahlian principle of an in- 
telligent, presiding, and preservative power. 
We have thus rapidly conducted our read- 
ers over the ground of medical history, and 
have presented a faint outline of the prevail- a 
ing systems of medical philosophy, frSm the I 
timeof the Grecian to the time of the “ Eng- 1 
lish Hippocrates to the period when the J 
fanaticism and prejudice of system were 1 
shortly to give way before the precepts of I 
genuine philosophy and temperate induction ; 1 
when the medical science was to be esta- I 
blished upon a new foundation ; when die- I 
mistry was to undergo a reformation equally j 
radical and important ; when by consequence I 
a new alliance was to be formed between 9 
these two sciences; when the language of I 
metaphor and hypothesis was to be discarded 
from either ; andjivhen enquirers after truth 
were to be influenced and directed by the 
independant and invaluable maxim, “ Nihil 
in ihtellectu quod non prius in sensu.” 
On nosology, or the classification of dis- 
eases. Dr. Sydenham was the first w ho pro- , 
posed to adopt a division of diseases into 
class, order, and genus, upon similar princi-j 
pies with those of botanical arrangement. 
The idea lias been followed out by several of 
Sydenham’s successors, but by no means 
with that success which had been anticipat- 
ed. The reason why nosologists have in ; 
some measure failed, is sufficiently obvious. 
While the objects of natural history possess 
a certain degree of uniformity, enabling the j 
systematic to identify in a manner certain 
individuals, and thus to refer them to one 
class, scarcely anything of this order is ob-. 
served, or at least not sufficient to justify ar- .! 
rangement of the infinitely diversified pheno- . 
mena of disease. For example : a certain 
series of symptoms shall present themselves ! 
during the life of an individual, which shall j 
prove to have depended upon, or at least 
have been connected with, disordered con- 
dition of some particular organ. A careful : 
register of such symptoms might be supposed . 
to furnish the same guide to xhe pathologist] 
and physician, as a recollection of the pro-4 
minent character of a plant (o the botanist or 
agriculturist. This, however, is by no means 
the case. Similar symptoms are not inva-. 
riably characteristic of similar disorders. A 
cough may originate at one time from eir- , 
cumstances which would at another time sup-, 
press it. A catarrh of the nostrils will now 
be produced by a deficient, now by an ex- 
cessive, action of precisely the same mem- 
brane. The generic terms then which are 
introduced into medicine, are extremely fal- 
lacious : they in fact convey no idea of the 
precise nature of that affection which they , 
have been employed to indicate ; and th& 
difficulty is still greatly augmented when we- 
re collect the endless diversities . that must 
arise from the varied external circumstances, 
as affecting and modifying the constitutional; 
character of the same individual. 
A disease,- then, as indicated 'by name, and' 
described by signs, is in some measure an 
imaginary existence. Dr. Brown, the out- 
line of whose doctrines is elsewhere exhibited 
(see the article Brunonian System), aware 
of the errors attached to nosology founded 
on symptoms, proposed to comprehend all 
morbid affections under the two leading di- 
visions of diseases of increased and diminished 
excitement. Our author, however, in his 
opposition to particulars, went over to the 
other extreme of too indiscriminate and hasty 
generalization. The human frame is too 
complicated to admit of the simplification 
