movements of the new philosophy, should arrive at the "lame and impotent conclusion," expressed in his famous maxim-" Fuge medicos et medica menta si vis esse salvus." "Flee doctors and drugs, if you wish to be well." This radical error of founding medication, not upon experiment, but on conjecture, is the reason of the rapid succession of rival schools. "Like clouds that rake the mountain's summit, Or waves that own no curbing hand, From sunshine to the sunless land!" This is the reflection that forces itself upon the mind at this period of the history of medicine. After the breaking up of the Galenic Empire, the number of transitory monarchies is immense. Hoffmann, one of the greatest of his day, has now gone into utter oblivion; his books, these great folios, are never read, and are only referred to by the historian out of curiosity. We have already seen that Hoffmann investigated the machinery of the human frame, in order to discover its moving principle. Stahl announced this moving or animating power to be the soul-vxn-anima. This Hoffmann disputed. "Not the soul," he said, "but a material substance of extreme subtlety, something like æther-whatever that is, something of a gaseous nature, secreted in the brain, and poured into the blood, which it vivifies. This something, finer than all other matter, but not exactly spirit, or soul, or mind, is the moving principle of the animal organization,-also called the nervous fluid. It is upon this that the contractility of the muscles depends; it is this in excess that gives rise to spasm; and a defective supply of this induces atony. "It is to be observed," he says, "that the most dangerous diseases do not arise from accumulation of impure humours, but from a fine, volatile, subtle, vapourous matter. If it were possible to extinguish this by a powerful medicine, this would be much better than evacuating," &c.' But this fine volatile matter was, in Hoffmann's view, different, not only in form, but in nature from ordinary matter. This is proved by a treatise on the power of the Devil over the body.2 In this he argues that the Devil, being a spirit, has power over the "aer," "ether," or "Auidum catholicum," which extends throughout space; and that, as there is a similar fluid (fluidum aero-elasticum) in our bodies, the Devil must have power there too; in proof of which he quotes the instance of Job's boils, and adds, "that this was a fact, and not an allegory, the great Spanheim demonstrated." The chain of logic is here obvious enough. The Devil is a spirit; as a spirit he affects spirits, of which the ether is one; a similar spirit moves our bodies; therefore, the Devil has power there too. But while the Devil, in virtue of his spiritual nature, is thus related to the spirits of our bodies, surely, as the spirit of Evil, on the other hand, a sentient spirit, a scheming, wicked spirit, he is identical with mind or soul, or immaterial existence. And as things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, if both the human soul and the human corporeal spirit be of the same nature as the bad intelligence that plots our ruin, then the soul of man and the spirit of man must be identical, and there is no difference between the soul of Stahl and the subtle fluid of Hoffmann. The fact seems to be, that whenever men speculate in this transcendental region, they become vague in their ideas and language. Then one of the great sources of error is a confusion of terms in regard to what is material and what is not. By the word material is sometimes meant matter as we know it; at other times, matter as opposed to infi 1 Hoffmann, Anweisung zur Gesundheit, p. 101. 2 De Diaboli Potentiâ in Corpore. 1712. as nite extension; thus a spirit as finite must be materialinvisible and impalpable, it must be immaterial. In this way, the contradiction between Stahl and Hoffmann is reconciled. Hermann Boerhaave was born in December, 1668, eight years after Hoffmann and Stahl, at a village near Leyden, of which his father was the pastor. It was intended that he, too, should enter the Church; and, after a course of instruction at home, he went to Leyden, where he soon distinguished himself by his rapid acquirement of the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Chaldee languages, besides a knowledge of ancient, modern, and ecclesiastical history. He was early remarkable for his ease and fluency of diction: in short, he was the prodigy of the university of his day. With such endowments, and the object of so much notice as he must have been, it speaks much for his integrity and resolution that he declined the profession for which he was intended, feeling himself not disposed thereto, and recommenced his studies, under circumstances of some difficulty, having to maintain himself by teaching mathematics till he had acquired sufficient knowledge and reputation in this new career, to be appointed, in 1701, Lecturer on the Theory of Medicine. In the year 1709, he obtained the chair of medicine and botany; in 1715 he was appointed Rector of the University, Physician to St. Augustine's Hospital, and Professor of Clinical Medicine in the same. In 1718, to his previous appointments was added the chair of chemistry. So that he taught the theory of medicine, the practice of medicine, botany, and chemistry in separate courses, besides giving clinical lectures three times a week. Had he devoted his time to teaching alone, it would have required both wonderful talent and energy to discharge so many offices with respectable success. So far, however, did he exceed this standard, that his lectures were held in such esteem of excellence, as to be translated into most : modern languages-even into Arabic; and instead of devoting his life to it, this was merely the occupation of his leisure, for his time seems to have been nearly absorbed by the practice of his profession, if we may judge from the fact of his having accumulated a fortune of two million florins— somewhere about £200,000 sterling-in about thirty-five years. The unparalleled success with which Boerhaave discharged all his duties, obtained for him a reputation without precedent since the time of Galen, limited only by the boundaries of the civilized, we might almost say the inhabited, world. As might have been expected, he was too good a card to be overlooked by the academies of science and royal societies of his day, and was by their own request enrolled a member of all the most celebrated. He died in the year 1738, in his seventieth year. In summing up his character, his biographer says of him :"Boerhaave was the most remarkable physician of his age, perhaps the greatest of modern times! a man, who, when we contemplate his genius, his condition, the singular variety of his talents, his unfeigned piety, his spotless character, and the impress which he left not only on contemporaneous practice, but on that of succeeding generations, stands forth as one of the brightest names on the page of medical history, and may be quoted as an example not only to physicians, but to mankind at large." When he recovered from an illness in the year 1722, there was a general illumination in Leyden, and after his death a monument was erected to his memory in the church of St. Peter. "When I first applied to the study of physic," says Cullen, “I learned only the system of Boerhaave : and even when I came to take a Professor's chair in this University (Edinburgh), I found that system here in its entire and full force: and I believe it still subsists in credit elsewhere, and that no other system of reputation has been yet offered to the world."' Cullen's Physiology and Nosology, Vol. I., p. 412. These quotations are not the expressions of any unusual estimate of Boerhaave; they are the unanimous judgment of the age in which he lived. Shall we call them extravagant? In one sense they are; in another sense they are not. The influence of Boerhaave was immense while it lasted-it was world-wide; but it was like a ripple on the ocean-it had no depth. He knew everything and did everything better than any of his contemporaries, except those who made one thing, not everything, their study. He was familiar with the researches of the great anatomists, of the chemists, of the botanists, of historians, of men of learning, but he was not a great anatomist, chemist, or historian. As to his practice, we cannot pronounce a very decided opinion, except that he was a man of judgment and independence. Here his reputation made his success : a prescription of his would no doubt effect many a cure, although the patient had taken the remedy he prescribed fifty times without any benefit. His greatness depended upon his inexhaustible activity. He had the energy of a dozen ordinary men, and so he was twelve times as powerful as one. He mentions quite incidentally how he was in the habit of frequently spending whole nights in botanical excursions on foot; and we know he had no time to sleep in the day. He took an interest in everything, was always on the alert, had a prodigious memory, and indefatigable industry. On these great homely qualities, added to a kind disposition and an unaffected piety, his popularity was founded. It was all fairly won and nobly worn. It is startling, however, to find that a man whose name one hundred years ago was familiar to the ear as household words, and of whom historians predicted that he would always be regarded as one of the greatest as well as best of men, an example to his race, should be already almost forgotten. An example is of no use unless it is known; Boerhaave is now unknown. The reason is plain ;-he |
