whole." The animal economy is, I say, a system consisting of parts mutually necessary to one another, and to the subsistence of the whole; but I shall have occasion to say also, that there is some difference in the importance of these parts, that it is pretty evident that the most important part to the economy is the brain. One word more upon the subject, and it is this, that the connection and dependence of all the parts of the system appears to be constantly necessary from what we commonly observe."

As a farther illustration of Dr Brown's gross ignorance of medical literature, it may be mentioned that though he makes frequent mention of Stahl, and claims to himself the merit of having given the first complete refutation of his system, he invariably misspells his name; styles him Professor of Medicine and Chemistry in Berlin; and alleges that he" did not give his works, either medical or chemical, in writing, himself, but attested copies of both done by Juncker." (Observations on Spasm, § 164 and 171, note.)

Whether Dr Brown was actually the dupe of his own ingenuity, or secretly laughed at the credulity of those who received his vague speculations as the philosophical inductions of "a sure and cautious observer of the phenomena of nature," I cannot pretend to determine. There can be little doubt, however, that these speculations had their origin in personal spite arising out of wounded vanity; and the malignant and rancorous animosity displayed in the writings in which they are expounded, take away the pleasure which might have been derived from the manifestation of talent such as he has evinced, even in the support of erroneous opinions.

Few authors seem to have better comprehended the

spirit in which Dr Brown's opposition to Dr Cullen's pathological and therapeutical doctrines was conceived, or to have more justly appreciated the estimation to which it was entitled, than Professor Scuderi of Modena, who, in his Introduzione alla Storia della Medicina Antica e Modena, published in 1794, observes : Brown, in the second part of his Compend, pretends to refute the system of Cullen; and certainly, if some feeble objections, joined to violent abuse and the most marked hatred and bitterness against the reputation of a celebrated man, merit the name of refutation, no one has succeeded better than Brown in that difficult undertaking. But in place of a calm examination of the fundamental principles established by the illustrious Reformer of medicine, and a rational criticism of the physiological system of medicine, Brown confines himself to an attack on the doctrine of Spasm, as he calls it, and on the Vis Medicatrix Naturæ, as if Cullen had given spasm for the sole proximate cause of every disease, and the Vis Medicatrix Naturæ for a universal law. Is spasm the sole corner-stone of the doctrine of Cullen? is it placed in front as the source of every morbid affection to which the human body is subject? It is, it may be said, represented by him as the cause of fever: But does Cullen, in reality, make the proximate and primitive cause of fever consist in spasm, or not rather in the diminished energy of the brain, followed and accompanied by spasm of the skin? Let the reader examine with attention the text of Cullen, and decide how far the criticism of Brown is applicable. With regard to the Vis Medicatrix Naturæ, those who have studied the works of the Scotch Boerhaave know in what estimation he himself held it; what objections he urges to the views of the Stahlians on this subject; and in how judicious and correct a point of view he considers this law of the animal economy in his excellent treatise on Fever. What, then, is the reputation of Brown? A perpetual invective against the

superior merit of his illustrious colleague [teacher]. And what difference is there between the two systems? That which distinguishes a great and salutary reform from a pernicious and unsatisfactory hypothesis."

Though the doctrines of Dr Brown, which we have been considering, were, at their first promulgation, embraced by some of the younger and more ardent medical students in Edinburgh, and by a few practitioners in different parts of Great Britain, they were never generally adopted by the medical profession in this country, nor regarded by them as either sound in principle or safe in practice. In some of the medical schools on the continent of Europe, however, and particularly in those of Italy, these doctrines appear to have been enthusiastically received by several of the teachers, and by large numbers of the students ; and in different parts of Germany they were adopted by various pathologists of high reputation. In pretending to explain all the phenomena, healthy and morbid, of the animal economy, by the single and universal principle of Excitability, or Life, Dr Brown's system delivered its followers from the drudgery necessarily attendant on acquiring a knowledge of the numerous and complicated doctrines of the simple solids and humoral pathology, at that time not completely banished from the medical schools of these countries; while it expressed its leading dogmas in a language so entirely new, as to communicate to those who adopted it the distinguishing badge of a sect, and to instil into their minds the flattering idea that, in embracing it, they were become the reformers, rather than the mere students of the science they were

VOL. II.

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cultivating. Such a theory of medicine could not fail to find followers among those who had grown weary of poring over the old and stale doctrines of the medical schools; and who,-participating in the innovating spirit then beginning to prevail in Europe, in the natural and metaphysical sciences, as well as in the political,—were in search of opinions apparently more in unison than these doctrines with the advancing state of medicine, and of its collateral sciences. That the system of Dr Brown did not obtain a reception equally favourable in France as it met with in Italy and Germany, may, it is conceived, in some measure be accounted for by the attention of the medical students of that country having, at the time of its appearance, been begun to be occupied with the Vital Doctrines of Bordeu and Barthez, in the school of Montpellier, and in part also, perhaps, by the jealous reluctance which many of the medical men of that nation have shown to adopt opinions originating in England.

It was in northern Italy, and particularly in the medical schools of Pavia, Pisa, Padua, Parma, Milan, Turin, and Bologna, that the Brunonian doctrines attracted the largest share of attention, and were subjected to the most elaborate and rigorous discussions. It may be questioned whether the enthusiastic reception which these doctrines at first met with in that country, was not in part attributable to the very limited knowledge which most of its physicians had acquired of the pathological views of Hoffmann; and of the extension and improvements which Dr Cullen, in availing himself of the experimental labours of Haller, Whytt, and others, had given to the pathology of

the nervous system. And even the views which Baglivi had opened up, relative to the importance of the state of the solids in the production of the morbid phenomena of the animal economy, and the share which, in later times, some Italian physiologists had taken in prosecuting the inquiry into the distinct nature of irritability and sensibility, do not appear to have exerted any very considerable influence on the pathological opinions entertained at this period by their countrymen.

Among the teachers of practical medicine in northern Italy contemporary with Dr Cullen, Borsieri, John Peter Frank, and Vacca Berlinghieri, may be considered as having justly enjoyed the highest reputation. Neither Borsieri nor Frank appear from their writings to have had much acquaintance with the works of Dr Cullen; and the severe, and, in many respects, unjust criticism of Dr Cullen's First Lines, published by Vacca in 1787,1 was calculated to lower the Edinburgh Professor in the estimation of Italian pathologists, and, of consequence, to disincline them to the study of his writings.

The

The doctrines of Brown were first introduced to the knowledge of medical men in Italy by Drs Moscati, Rasori, and Joseph, son of John Peter, Frank. first of these physicians published an edition of the Elementa Medicinæ at Milan in 1792, with a preface of his

1 Saggio intorno alle principali e piu frequenti Malattie del Corpo Umano, e de' Rimedj piu valorosi di esse.

2 Dr Brown's son mentions (Life of his Father, p. 163), that an Italian translation of the Elementa was published by Vincent Solenghi, but does not say when or where. This translation I have not seen.