OF THE LIFE OF LINNAEUS. 
217 
science. Notwithstanding this meritorious effort, which was duly ac- 
knowledged by the greatest masters, M. Vicq d’Azyr, secretary of the 
medical society of Paris , the panegyrist of Linnaeus on the banks of 
Seine, gave the following dictatorial and abstruse opinion upon the 
abovementioned compendium of the Materia Medica : « Although he 
<f (Linnaeus) has made laudable efforts to introduce indigenous offici- 
“ nal plants instead of exotics, yet we cannot help owning that this work 
“ is little worthy of its author 
The genius which seemed so entirely created for systematic order 
and description, farther displayed its eminence in pathology, which 
is another branch of physic. The necessity of a system, of a general 
rule by which diseases might be known and discerned according to 
their difference and manifold variations, had frequently occurred to his 
penetrating mind. An habitual practice of near three years at Stock- 
holm, gave him a favourable opportunity of colleHing observations. 
Hi. Thomas Sydenham, the British Hippocrates, had already 
pointed out in the last century, the essential advantages of a syste- 
matical nosology. « It would be a very good thing,” says he, « if all 
“ tlie diseases were reduced to definite and certain species, with as 
“ much accuracy as the botanists have done with regard to the descrip- 
« tion of plants. +” Many were the opinions which had been given re- 
specting the best plan of nosology. Some classed the diseases (the first 
* Quoique il a fait de louables efforts, pour substituer des plantes indigenes aux etran- 
geres, nous ne pouvons dissimuler, que cette production est peu digne de son auteur. See 
Eloge de M. de Linne, far M. \ _ (^u’Azm, in the Histoire de la Seciete de Medicine 
vol. ii. A Paris, 1780, in quarto. ’ 
t Expedit, ut morbi omnes ad defiuitas et certas species revocentur, eadem prorsus diljV 
tia ac qua id factum videmus a botanicis in suis phytologiis. 1 ' 8en ' 
r f 
and 
