A course of fifteen lectures, on medical botany : denominated Thomson's new theory of medical practice; in which the various theories that have preceded it are reviewed and compared. Delivered in Cincinnati, Ohio / ... With introductory remarks by the proprietor.

  • Robinson, Samuel.
Date:
1830 [i. e. 1831]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A course of fifteen lectures, on medical botany : denominated Thomson's new theory of medical practice; in which the various theories that have preceded it are reviewed and compared. Delivered in Cincinnati, Ohio / ... With introductory remarks by the proprietor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Organized substances are the food of animals, and as medicinal, must be more congenial to their natures, than the brute mass of inanimated matter. Dr. Ray observes, we are sprung from the earth, we feed upon her bounty, draw our nourishment from her bosom, and our healing medicines from her breast. It must be confessed, says Dr. Sydenham, that although mineral medicines meet the indications of disease, they are not to be relied on as specifics, with the same entire confidence, as the vegetable medicines. Here is a strong testimony to the theory of Thomson. Dr. Glisson, was the first of the moderns who paid any atten- tion to the vital principle, and the first who mentions irritability as a property of this vis insita. He defines it to be a property, which, receding in all bodies, can be excited to action by irritation; that it resides in a mucus, and is perfected by heat and blood. He had no idea of the distinction between sensibility and irritability, and therefore he uses the old distinctions of animal, vital, and natural functions. Because a muscle was seen to contract, when pricked, although separated from the body, he believed the fibres and muscles had perception in themselves. Here again he confounds sensibility and irritability; and attempts to confirm the hypothesis, by the remark, that there can nothing be, in the intellect, but what we receive by the senses. Dr. Cullen advanced the same maxim one hundred years afterwards. Baglivi also pursued, to great extent, his observations on the phenomena of the vital principle. Haller says, irritability is independent of sensibility, and vice versa. Glisson thought irritability depended on volition: Belloni, on the accele- rated motion of the blood: Baglivi, on the oscillatory motions of the dura mater along the membranes: Stahl, and his followers, supposed irritation to be innate and influenced by the soul. Dr. Winter traced all human motions to fibrous irritability and stimuli; and the younger Boerhaave to the moving power of animals. Dr. Whytt believed irritability essential to motion, and was produced by a sentient principle residing in the medulla of the brain. Dr. Kirkland thought that this medullary substance was conveyed by the nerves to the muscular fibres, which caused motion. But Dr. Whytt affirmed perception was necessary in connection with all or any material substance to produce motion: While Zimmerman