1831: a retrospect : being the President's address to the Harveian Society, January 19, 1893 / by W.B. Cheadle.

  • Walter Butler Cheadle
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: 1831: a retrospect : being the President's address to the Harveian Society, January 19, 1893 / by W.B. Cheadle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    9/38 page 5
    In the eighteenth century men of brilliant genius and great learning wasted their powers upon futile attempts to construct complete systems of medicine, and assumed various figments—imaginary bodies with imaginary properties—neeessar}^ to support them. It is curious to read the speculations of the leaders of thought at that time—men of great learning and intellectual power—and reflect that they formed the staple of medical inquirj' and dis- cussion little more than one hundred years ago. One (Dr. Mead) hypothecated a ' nervous liquor' which he supposed to be a quantity of the universal elastic matter, the luminiferous ether of Newton. Another (Boerhaave) had a system, of which the three main doctrines were inflammation, obstruction, and plethora. Another (Hoff'man of Halle) held that life de- pended upon an universally diffused ethei-, breathed in from the atmosphere, and contained in all parts of the body. It aecumulated in the brain, and there generated the nervous fluid, or ' pneuma.' Health depended upon a proper ' tone'—some diseases being produced by excess of tone, or spasm, others by want of tone, or atony—a verbal figment which has sur- vived to our day. A fourth great teaclier (Stahl of Halh^)
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image