Asia and its divisions, India, Tartary, and China. Nor was the study of Chemistry, though in a state of great rudeness and inaccuracy, without its results in this matter. The art of preparing distilled spirits, which had been discovered by Arnold de Villa Nova in the fourteenth century, had been carried to considerable perfection in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The art of preparing Ether had been taught by Valerius Cordus in his Pharmacopoeia in 1545. The saline preparations of Mercury and Antimony had been gradually introduced as remedial agents, chiefly, indeed, by such men as Paracelsus, Leonhard Thurneysser, and Van Helmont; yet, with such effect, that neither physicians nor surgeons could conveniently dispense with their employment. Lastly, the neutral salts were becoming daily better known and more commonly employed.

The effect of all this accumulation of stores and substances, which promised to extend and multiply the remedial means employed by physicians, had hitherto tended rather to encumber than to strengthen, and had certainly not increased in any perceptible degree the actual efficiency of the healing art. The state of Materia Medica, indeed, during the end of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century was remarkable for four circumstances. First, the lists of the Materia Medica were ample, and contained great numbers of articles which were more or less strongly and confidently recommended in the cure of diseases, and for the accomplishment of particular purposes in the economy. But they contained also many articles useless and

inert, and not a few to which were ascribed properties, which it was impossible they could possess. These lists, indeed, were exuberant and redundant to a fault; and the effect of this redundance was to perplex and confuse the ideas of practitioners, and render their practice rash, unsteady, irrational, and inefficient.

Secondly, the confidence reposed in the use of medicines of all the different classes was in general very great; in some instances unbounded, in many irrational; and it clearly appears, from the writings of physicians, that although many persons daily died of various morbid affections, nevertheless, physicians were in the habit of prescribing medicines and medicinal preparations, which they believed could always alleviate, and often cure, every known malady.

Thirdly, it was a common custom, both in the Pharmacopoeias published by authority, and in the writings of individual physicians, to combine in one formula or prescription a great number of simple ingredients. All the Pharmacopoeias and Formularies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries contain formulæ for various medicinal compositions, in which the number of ingredients is often very great,-varying in certain instances from twenty-four or twentyfive up to thirty-three, forty-eight, fifty, and fiftytwo; and formulas of this description are in not a few instances continued till the middle of the eighteenth century. Nor was it different in the writings of physicians. In the prescriptions left by Morton, and more especially in those given by several Continental physicians, we find the same fondness for

complicity of composition. This was much owing to the example of Fernel and Sir Theodore de Mayerne, the latter a person rated certainly at his full value, and a great lover and practitioner of complex prescriptions. In short, it was the practice at that time for physicians to crowd together numbers of differing, incongruous, often expensive, yet useless articles; and the great value of a prescription consisted in the number and multiplicity of articles which were directed to be mingled in it as ingredients. Sydenham is almost the first and only physician of that period in whose writings may be recognized a tendency to greater simplicity.

Lastly, In the practice of medicine, as generally conducted, there was no rational or logical connection between the disease or diseased states attempted to be cured, and the therapeutic means employed with the intention of removing them. A considerable proportion of the Therapeutic and Materia Medica department rested on empirical foundations. Not a few methods and remedies were suggested by superstitious observances. In few or no instances was it the custom, in laying down therapeutic methods and prescribing remedies, to study the nature and tendency of the morbid affections; and, in too many instances, the practical part of medicine was a system of blind and irrational administration of remedies, occasionally powerful, but unsuitable; sometimes inert and unserviceable, sometimes hurtful. The object of medical investigation in these days was not so much the inquiry into the nature of disease, the causes of its formation, and the means of pre

venting it, as the incessant search for remedies and medicines, and the most agreeable method of administering them; an object certainly laudable and useful when kept in its proper place, but liable, when carried, as it was at this time, to excess, to divert the mind of the physician from more necessary subjects of investigation.

Though this was the condition of Therapeutics and Materia Medica during the seventeenth and great part of the eighteenth century, so far as the great body of practitioners were concerned, it would be unjust, nevertheless, to infer that there were in the profession none who could carry their views to a more extended sphere, and reason in a more philosophical manner upon the treatment of diseases and the operation of medicines. We know, indeed, that during the course of the seventeenth century, there arose in England a race of men, mostly connected with one or other of the universities, who, with great industry, originality of thinking, and talent for investigation, made strenuous efforts to penetrate and understand the mysteries of the animal body, to elucidate the nature of various diseases, and to furnish at least the means of improving and rendering more efficient the treatment. Among the earliest of these was William Harvey, whose great discovery, though at first opposed, and rather slowly recognized, exerted at length an unquestionable and powerful influence. Contemporary with, or closely following him, came Thomas Wharton, Francis Glisson, Thomas Willis, Richard Lower, the pupil and associate of Willis, John Mayow, Nehemiah Grew, Walter

Charleton, Samuel Collins, Thomas Sydenham, Richard Morton, Christopher Bennet, and Henry Ridley.*

It would be unseasonable in this place to notice even the comparative merits and services of these industrious and able inquirers. But it may be proper to remark, that while all of them studied anatomy, and dissected with different degrees of diligence and accuracy, Willis, Glisson, and Mayow, were active in applying their anatomical attainments in investigating physiology; and all of them, but especially Willis, Glisson, and afterwards Morton and Ridley, availed themselves of every opportunity of elucidating the nature of diseases by the aid of morbid anatomy. Collins was the author of an excellent compilation on anatomy, human, comparative, and pathological, a work of great learning, and containing much useful information. Their endeavours in this respect were powerfully and effectually aided by the labours of various inquirers in France, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany. When we consider, indeed, how many diligent observers arose, how sedulously and generally morbid anatomy was cultivated, and how much light was thrown on the nature of diseases during the seventeenth, and still more during the early part of the eighteenth

The names of these physicians are arranged as nearly as possible in chronological order. Thomas Wharton was born in 1610, and died in 1673; Willis was born in 1620 or 1621, died in 1677; F. Glisson was born in 1597, died in 1677; R. Lower, born in 1630, died 1691; J. Mayow, born 1645, died 1679; N. Grew, born in 1628, died in 1711.