from Principles of Physiological Science byRichard Saumarez
CHAPTER IV. ON THE DOCTRINE OF MATERIALISM
The Materialityof Life examined and refuted.
I am naturally led, as animmediate effect flowing from cause, to investigate the Brunoniansystema system which I am grieved to say, has generallyprevailed at home, as it does universally abroad; not only intheory, but in practice also. Instead of grasping, and adoptingthe doctrine of the Materialists, in its native dress, and ascribingto the Almighty Power of matter, the essential and original attributesof life; it is to the residuary and ultimate effects only, whichmatter evolves, whence life originates, and to which it is referred:insteadof making life an origin, and a principle, Dr. BROWN, supposedit to consist in a forced state;that it is an effect onlyinstead of a cause:he makes life to begin at its end;toconsist in what he calls excitement;and that thisexcitement, or life, is the effect of which the exciting powers,acting on the excitability, are the cause.
If this relationship actuallysubsisted, between the exciting powers, and the excitability;if the result of both, were the true cause of life,life wouldthen, indeed, be, what he foolishly affirms it would be, a forced,not an original state; an effect, not a cause;an end, nota beginning; instead of animated beings, being, by necessity,forced to die, they might, by the power of excitation, be forcedto live; so that, by the proper application of his stimuli, hemight perpetuate life for ever and ever. Life might be changedand varied, exhausted, augmented, and renewed to a high, or toa low state, back again from a high to a low one, in proportionas he chose to infuse into the system his diffusible, or fusiblestimuli,brandy or waterheat or coldoxygen or azotepleasureor painjoy or grief.
Nothing but a perverted wayof thinking, could have led philosophers, such as these, to ascribeto matter, independently and abstractedly from the energy andparticipation of life, the power of organisation; or, to havereferred to this organisation, the source of life, as its cause.It is evident, indeed, that these gentlemen move in an invertedorder, and end where they ought to begin; they begin, by makingpower to arise out of weakness;symmetry and order, from thatwhich is naturally formless and motionless; and, finally, designand intelligence, the attributes of things void of all consciousness,and destitute of all sensation. Instead of making orgranisationthe effect of life, they make life to be the effect of organisation;instead of making the phenomena of organisation the end, theymake it the primary and efficient cause, in which life virtuallyoriginates and abides,the source of life, indeed, at itstermination.
This silly hypothesis isat once refuted, by the total impossibility which exists, of givinga rational answer to this simple question; to the question whichI have often had occasion to put to many of our physiologists,who entertain these opinions; what is the cause of organisation?What is the cause that the multitude of seeds, and of eggs, whichare deposited in the same soil, and exposed to the same air, areable to act upon the different substances by which they are surrounded:toconvert them from a dead to a living state; from a state of dispersion,to a state of combination; from a tabula rasa to organisationand form; from chaos itself into symmetry and order; and froma multitude of separate parts, into one whole system, total andcomplete? Although I have frequently heard much ingenuity displayedin reasoning upon this superstructure, I have often witnessedmuch folly and ignorance, in attempts to account for the foundationof it. Instead of supposing that the different organs, which differentbeings possess, are the recipients only of these different powers,and that the matter of which they are composed, would, withoutthem, be as imbecile and inert as the shoe is without the foot,or as the musical instrument is, without the art, or skill, ofthe musician:it is to the matter alone that the whole poweris referred. An hypothesis, such as this, is not more absurd thanthat which is assumed, that the organs with which living beingsare endowed are the cause, primary and efficient, of whichvitality and intellect are the effect. With as much reason mightit be affirmed, that the pen with which I write, moves my hand,instead of my hand moving the pen; that the top moves the whip,instead of the whip moving the top; that language is the cause,of which rationality is the effect; that the nucleus ofthe earth, as well as the dirt and mud upon its surface, are thecauses of which vitality is the effect: that the whole materialworld is, in fact, the great first cause, of which the Almightyis the secondary, or instrumental cause; that is to say, thatthe second cause, is the cause of the first, and that the effectproduced is the cause of the causes.
It evidently appears, thatthe materialists, instead of attributing inertness to matter,make it the first cause of motion; they behold it destitute ofform, and of fabricating power, and yet refer organisationto its imbecility; they see it matter impelled, and yet they makeit impelling matter. Instead of considering, it the last and lowestof things, they make it the first and the best; instead of separatingthe cause from the effect, they constantly confound both together;they mistake the thing produced, for the power producing; thefact, (the thing done) for the law. Instead of putting confusioninto order, they put order into confusion. The consequences ofthis false philosophy are manifested by the puerile knowledgewhich we possess, being entirely circumscribed to effects only,without any knowledge of cause;to ends without means; tohistory without definition, to definition without axiom; finally,to a nomenclature, which never designates the nature of the thingwhich it is designed to proclaim.
It is high time that absurdities,such as these, should be banished from our schools of science,and the rising, generation rescued from the contamination whichthey, in consequence, suffer. So long, however, as the false hypothesiscontinues to prevail, that matter is the cause of which life andsoul are the effects, no hopes whatever can be entertained ofany philosophical reformation. I, nevertheless, will maintain,that these opinions are not the offspring of ignorance, simply;but of two-fold ignorance,of that state of ignorance, bywhich men persevere in error, without being conscious of it, andwhich sears the mind against conviction and reproof.
from introduction to A NewSystem of PHYSIOLOGY
By the Brunonians, life isaffirmed to be merely an effect of which external action is thecause, similar to the excited motion of a top, by the combinedagency of the whip and of the materials of which the top is composed.This latter doctrine will be found merely a perverted modificationof the former one, connected with some tenets which it has borrowedfrom another source. Had these systems been generated merely todie like the ephemeris of a day, as many others have done, itis probable that I should have left the discussion of them tothose whose leisure and opportunities may be supposed to qualifythem better for the task; but when the late translation by Dr.Beddoes of the Elementa Medicinae of Dr. Brown brings proof, thatthe Brunonian is the prevailing doctrine over Europe, as it unquestionablyis in this country, I have deemed it criminal to tolerate itserrors by remaining silent. I have endeavoured to expose the principleson which it is founded, and the evils that are produced when theyare applied to practice.
CHAPTER VI ON THE BRUNONIANSYSTEM
1799
The doctrine stated itproclaims Life to be a forced , not an original state aneffect of causes that are dead the cause stated operatingupon the excitability excitement the effect in consequenceproduced, and which constitutes Life the varying degreesof it this doctrine compared with Mr. Hunter's, and provedto have been borrowed from it, or its principle tenets thoseparts are true those parts fabricated by Dr. Brown, falsethe principle of the doctrine examined and criticized, &c,&c.
ANOTHER doctrine has beenlately broached, and very generally adopted. It proclaims Lifeto be a forced, not an original state. This doctrine makesexcitement or action the effect of the exciting powers; and theexciting powers both external and internal are supposed to bethe true and essential cause of Life. These exciting powers arestated to be heat, food, wine, poisons, contagions, the blood,secreted fluids, and air: not these only; they extend to suchas proceed from, and are the immediate effect of which mentalpower is the cause; as thinking, emotion and passion, muscularcontraction, and the different functions of the body itself.
These are the various agentscalled by Dr. Brown exciting powers, and which are especiallydestined to act upon what he calls the excitability of the system.
It is further stated, thatevery animated being is allotted a certain portion only of thisquality, or principle on which phaenomena of Life depend.
Although it is stated asthe first and most fundamental dogma of this doctrine, that acertain portion only of this quality or principle is allottedto every animated being; it is supposed, that this limited quantityvaries in an unlimited manner in different animals: that as thisquantity, which was stated to be limited, is more intense,the animal is more vivacious, or more susceptible of the actionof the exciting powers: "that excitement, the effect of theexciting powers, constitutes the true cause of Life,"p. 14: that this excitement (or this Life) may be too great, toosmall, or in just measure, &c.
When too great excitementis induced, weakness follows, because the excitability becomesdefective: this condition of the system is termed a state of indirectdebility: on the contrary, when the exciting powers, i.e.stimuli, are withheld, weakness is induced also; and the termdirect debility is the name expressive of this state: andfinally, that if the exciting powers are withdrawn death ensuesas certainly as when the excitability is gone.
The excitability is supposedto be seated in the medullary portion of the nerves and muscles,to which the appellation of nervous system has been given. Inthis the excitability is supposed to be inherent, but it is notdifferent on different parts of its seat: as soon as it is affectedany where, the affection is propagated every where: nor is theexcitement or action ever increased in a part, whilst it is diminishedin the system in general: or, in other words, different partscan never be in different states of excitement.
These are the general andfundamental principles on which the whole of the Brunonian systemis founded, and which are stated to be so plain, as to be easyof comprehension by the meanest capacity; so beneficial to mankind,that the science of medicine is simplified, and the cure of diseaserendered more certain than it was before.
So far however from thissystem of medicine being easy of comprehension, to me it appearsinvolved in the most dire confusion that can be conceived. Itmakes Life to be an effect instead of a cause; it makes Life toconsist in excitement, and excitement of life to arise from substancesthat are naturally dead. Instead therefore of the principles beingfounded in truth, they lead to error; so far from consistencybeing apparent in the whole, we shall find there is perpetualjarring and contradiction between the text and the context ofthe different parts.
The parts which appear tome founded in truth were propagated by the late Mr. Hunter, longbefore Dr. Brown. It is however probable that Dr. Brown wishedto conceal the plagiarism of his knowledge by giving differentnames to principles virtually the same. Let us therefore compareboth systems together, and we shall soon discover the affinitythey bear in points the most essential. Mr. Hunter supposed, thatevery animated system possessed a living principle, and that thisliving principle was the cause of the phaenomena of Life. Dr.Brown, instead of retaining the term living principle, abandonsit, and invents excitability in its stead. Mr. Hunter supposedthat this living principle was susceptible of being acted uponby stimuli. Dr. Brown supposed, that the excitability was actedupon by exciting powers, or the stimuli of Mr. Hunter; Mr. Huntersupposed that these stimuli, acting of the living principle, producedaction. Dr. Brown thinks, that the consequence of these excitingpowers acting upon the excitability produced excitement. In thisultimate effect produced; in this excitement, great and strikingindeed was the difference they both entertained. Mr. Hunter supposedit to be an effect only of life and of organization. Dr. Brownimagined that this excitement itself constituted life, and wasvirtually its source; the source of life indeed at its termination.
It is at this terminatedorigin, or originated termination, where Life begins, that Dr.Brown stops: on the contrary, Mr. Hunter pursues his principlesto their ultimate effects. He investigates the power of Life inthe conversion of dead into living matter, and the formation ofchyle; in the change chyle sustains to its perfect commutationinto blood, and to the use of blood in the support of the system;and he farther ascertains the various properties it contains,and the particular uses for which it is designed. It appears tome, that when Dr. Brown takes Mr. Hunter as his guide for principleswith new names, he is generally right; but when he abandons theroad Mr. Hunter had etched out for him, and explores one of hisown: when we see Dr. Brown solitary and alone, we then beholdprinciple founded in error, and its application to practice mostdangerous.
The great error of this Brunoniansystem appears to proceed from this: Instead of ascribing powerto the animated system, in which it evidently resided, and mereaptitude and fitness to be acted upon in the matter received,whether it be water and air to vegetables, or the different articlesof diet to different animals; he makes the matter which everyanimated system receives, to possess the power, whilst the systemitself he conceives to be the thing acted upon: he consequentlyis led to ascribe power to that which is naturally weak, and weaknessto that which is essentially strong: he calls the various acts(the living principle) powers; agents that act, insteadof things that are acted upon: he makes life to come out of thebody, instead of residing within it: instead of making actionthe effect of life, he makes life the effect of action; forin action (excitement), says he, the true cause of lifeconsists, the effect of the exciting powers acting on the excitability.Life, therefore, does not consist in the excitability alone,or in the exciting power alone, but in both together.
It must however be remarked,that in different parts of his book he expressly says, that theexciting powers contribute the true cause of life. A mutual relationis however supposed to subsist between the excitability and theexciting powers.
When too great excitement(i.e. too much life) is induced, indirect debility follows; becausethe excitability becomes defective. On the contrary, when thestimuli are withheld, direct debility takes place: although thestate of direct debility is induced by the subtraction of theexciting powers; it is notwithstanding supposed, "thatthe excitability is then in excess:" so that when theexcitability of the system is most strong, the excitement (orthe cause of life) ought to be most weak; and, on the contrary,when the excitement is most weak, the excitability ought to bemost strong; or, in other words, the excitability is supposedto become more abundant in proportion to the weakness of the excitingpowers in producing excitement, the excitability becomes proportionallylessened and diminished.
If this fundamental propositionof his doctrine were true, animated beings ought to begin withoutexcitability or animation and end with a total accumulation ofit. Excitability would be most languid when it is known to bemost active, as in the foetal and infant state, in the evolutionof the system, and in the organization of its various parts: itwould be most active when it is known to be most languid, andespecially when it is totally exhausted, as in the oldest periodof old age; and there ought to be a total accumulation of thisexcitability by the insensibility to the action of stimuli, andby the weakness and cessation of all excitement.
The abundant condition ofaccumulated excitability would be most apparent when the systemis in a paralytic and torpid state, and when there seems to bea general apathy of the whole: it ought to be the case in syncopeand suspended animation, whether from submersion or the effectof cold, when the organs through which the excitability acts inproducing excitement are no longer susceptible of the action ofstimuli. If this species of relationship actually existed betweenthe exciting powers and the excitability, not these false consequencesonly would ensue, but it is also very evident, that if Life bethe forced state which Dr. Brown has proclaimed, it might be gaugedor varied, exhausted, augmented, or renewed to a high or a lowstate, and back again from a low to a high one, in proportionas he chose to infuse into the system brandy or water, heat orcold, oxygene or azote, pleasure or pain, joy or grief; that hecould make excitability to die, and again to live; and consequentlythat Life itself was what he states it to be, a forced state;merely produced and preserved by the operation of external powers.
In all states of life, therefore,Dr. Brown supposed that man and other animals differ from themselvesin their dead state, or from any other inanimate, in this propertyalone; they can be affected by external agents as well as bycertain functions peculiar to themselves, in such a manner thatthe phaenomena peculiar to the living state can be produced. Thisproposition extends to every thing vital in nature, and thereforeis applicable to vegetables.
This assertion is not a trueone: living animals differ from dead in this respect, they possessthe power of affecting external substances (falsely called agents),and of performing certain functions peculiar to themselves; andthe dead state they are affected by external agents, and entirelychanged by them; so that the very substances which contributedthe most to the support of Life when it was in action, acceleratethe process of decomposition, as air, heat, &c. after thoseactions have ceased.
Dr. Beddoes himself, awareof these consequences, is obliged to confess that his principaltenets, if they be rigidly examined, will be found inconsistentwith his own important doctrine of the accumulation of excitability."It appears to me," says Dr. Beddoes, "that accordingto his first chapter (xviii) living beings ought to have proceededthrough languor to death in an unbroken tenor of wakefulness,and that all the images and lamentation which sleep has suggestedto the poets would have been lost; for he who assigns that a certainportion of excitability is allotted to every living system, bythat very assumption denies its continual production, subsequentdiffusion and expenditure, at a rate equal to the supply, or greateror less. That the brain is an organ destined to secrete the matterof life, he could never have supposed; otherwise he wouldnot have expressed a doubt whether excitability be a quality ora substance." p. 138.
That the matter of Life,as he falsely calls it, is not resident in the brain alone, wasproved by various facts I mentioned, of the foetus in uterobeing frequently destitute of brain altogether, although everyother part of its system was completely evolved; an evident proofthat the powers of life in general are most strong, and independentof organization in particular.
Dr. Beddoes, aware, I suppose,of this fact, allows "that infants have less predispositionthan adults to contagious fevers; and that, when they are infected,the chance of recovery is much greater." The reason is obvious,and is particularly illustrated, if we examine the action of theliving principle in different periods of its evolution with thedegree of susceptibility to disease. Although the maternal constitutionis occasionally attacked with contagious diseases, as typhus,fever, small-pox, measles, lues venerea, &c. the foetus,although it occasionally participates of the confluent, most commonlyescapes it altogether. The reason appears evidently to arise fromthe full energy of the excitability in the office of evolutionand of growth; it converts, in the most eminent degree, the bloodit receives into various organs, and destroys any morbid or sensibleproperties it may possess, by the perfect and total assimilationit undergoes. It however occasionally does happen, that the assimilatingpowers of the foetus are weak, and the morbid causes are strong;and that they do produce the same effects on the foetal, as theyare wont to do upon the adult frame causing the phaenomenaof disease. Hence it is, that infants have occasionally been bornwith variolous and syphilitic eruptions, receiving the contaminationthrough the medium of the maternal constitution.
The Life which constitutesthe power of the system in its nature is definite; in point ofevolution it is bounded; in point of duration it is circumscribed;it is gradually developed and evolved; and after having attainedits period of perfection, it gradually verges to decay, and becomesdecomposed into its constituent parts: it verges to decay by anexhaustion of the living power, and a consequent inability toact upon extraneous substances, by a total loss of power, eitherof acting upon external substances, or resisting their operation.External things therefore act upon the system, enter into a chemicalunion with the parts of which it is composed, and the phaenomenaof putrefaction or fermentation ensue, as the means which natureemploys to bring organized matter into a disorganized state, and,finally, to resolve it into a common one.
Thus then it appears thatthe operation of external things upon the animated system, falselyand unphilosophically called by Dr. Brown exciting powers,has a constant and unremitting tendency to weaken the organizationof the part, to diminish or to destroy the participation of Lifewhich this organization had received, and, finally to preventexcitement or action, the ultimate effect of this vital principleacting through the medium of the organs of which the system iscomposed.
It was in reversing thisorder of things, instead of following it, that Dr. Brown fellinto confusion and error; he mistook excitement for a cause insteadof an effect; he saw it an effect produced, and falsely believedit to be a producing cause; an effect produced, occasional andnot constant, by the organs as the instrumental cause, from theenergy of Life, the primary and essential cause in which the sourceand power of action essentially resides.
Instead of suspending thephaenomena which every animated system displays to the excitability,which he at first allows, he either divides the cause by whichthese phaenomena are produced, by ascribing them to the excitingpower acting on the excitability, or else he abandons altogetherthe power of the excitability (of Life), by ascribing the productionof the phaenomena to the exciting powers alone, or things externalto the system: he therefore asserts that the operation of thisexternal power produces excitement, and that excitement itselfconstitutes the true cause of Life. P. 14.
It is very evident to me,that Dr. Brown had no definite ideas whatever of the relationwhich different things bear to each other; that he in consequencehas confounded power with weakness, weakness with power; frequentlymistaking one for the other, as well cause for effect, as effectfor cause.
The most common observationought to have taught him, that although power in the abstractis a positive principle; yet, when it is considered as residingin any subject whatever, it no longer continues a positive, butimmediately becomes a relative term: the relation of power whichthe excitability (Life, or living system) bore to the things bywhich it was surrounded, depended on the weakness or aptitudethey possess, not of exciting, but of being excited upon; notof changing, but of being changed; not of producing action accordingto the nature of each, whether bread or meat, brandy or water;but of becoming subservient to the power which the excitabilitypossessed in which it resided, and by the energy of which it wasdisplayed in the production of action.
The exciting powers therefore,according to him, constitute the cause, of which excitement isthe effect; and in this effect, in this excitement Life is formed,and continues to subsist; to subsist indeed no longer than theexciting powers continue to act; to cease the instant they aresubtracted and withheld.
It is therefore necessaryfor me to enquire what are these Life-producing powers which possessthis distinguished faculty of imparting Life when it is exhausted;of diminishing Life when it is augmented, and of renewing Lifewhen it is dissipated.
According to him, they arevarious in number, they are both mental and corporeal. I shallnot extend my enquiry to those that have a direct and immediatetendency to destroy Life, instead of producing it, and which hehas introduced in his Vocabulary, "such as poisons, contagions,or those that proceed from the energy of the mind, as thinking,emotion and passion; muscular contraction, and the functions ofthe body itself." I shall confine myself to the considerationof those articles which he has especially enumerated and arranged,and which he supposes possess in a distinguished and graduateddegree the power of producing life or excitement. At the headof these are, 1. Opium, 2. Spirituous Liquors, 3. Musk, 4. Cinchonaor Bark.
The first of these Life-producingcauses is a juice extracted from a well known vegetable calledPoppy: it is generally obtained by boiling and par-boiling theheads until an extract is formed: (this extract dissolved withalcohol makes a tincture): after the extract is obtained, andset aside for months and years, and when it no more resemblesthe living vegetable from which it was procured, than it doesthe human system which it is destined to resuscitate, or thanalcohol does the vegetable by the decomposition of which it isproduced.
The second in Brandy. Itis procured in different countries from different substances:in warm climates it is the product of the first stage of fermentationwhich grapes sustain; it is produced by the death of the vegetable,in consequence of which it becomes decomposed and resolved intoa common state. In this country, Alcohol is obtained by distillationfrom stinking damaged wheat or barley.
Thirdly, Musk is ananimal substance produced by the excretory gland of an animalof the feline class; this gland is situated close to the anusof the beast, and, according to Dr. Brown's opinion, is the thirdin rank of Life-producing causes in Man!
The fourth is the Cinchonaof Linnaeus, or what is vulgarly called Peruvian Bark. This substanceis the fourth in order, and which is supposed to possess the powerin the fourth degree of producing excitement, or the true causeof Life. We have a particular and familiar example of the actionof bark upon animal matter, when animal matter has not the powerof acting upon bark, or at least when there is a mutual actionbetween both: when the bark, the exciting power, acts upon theexcitability which the skin contains, the process is called tanning,and the thing produced is called leather: there is an union thattakes place between both, between the bark and the skin. Moreneed not, I believe, be said upon the subject to make it moreabsurd than it prima facie appears.
These are the exciting powersof Dr. Brown, these are the effects that they invariably produce,and which evidently prove that Life is not a forced but an originalstate; that it is not produced or preserved by the operationof external causes.
It is foreign to my dispositionto wish to tarnish the good reputation of the dead, if it werenot with a view of doing good to the living. I should thereforeleave Dr. Brown's memory with all the character attached to it,if it were not for the mischief which his doctrines at this momentproduce. I know well, that in this country, the generality ofregular practitioners to science, have adopted the Brunonian Systemaltogether, and accommodated their practice to it. The influenceit has abroad may be collected from Dr. Beddoes himself, in aNote he has inserted at the conclusion of his own Observations."Since the preceding pages were printed.," says theDoctor, "I have received further indubitable proofs of theascendancy which the truths [he ought to have said the lies] promulgatedby Dr. Brown are gaining over men's minds in different parts ofEurope. A translation of his 'Observations' was published at Paviain 1792, and again republished at Venice; and in a Letter accompanyinga copy of the Translation, Dr. Rosari, by whom it was written,says 'In the University of Pavia, undoubtedly one of the firstin Europe, there is hardly a student ENDOWED WITH TALENT, whois not a Brunonian: the doctrine begins equally to spread in Germany,France, Genoa, and different parts of Italy, &c.'" Andagain, Dr. B. says, "The Reader may estimate what it is tohave put so many nations into the right path of medical investigation;although we should be out-stripped in medicine by the awakenedgenius of France [in chemistry, I suppose the Doctor means], orthe enlightened industry of Germany, we shall not be without consolation;since, in consequence of Brown's discoveries, our countrymen labouringunder disorders, such as we cannot cure, stand a chance of profitingby the collective efforts of human ingenuity!!"
Medical men therefore arenot bound to correct the operation of the poison which this doctrineis producing throughout Europe; but they are expressly calledupon by the author himself, to attack and controvert it if theycan. The author says. "that in prefixing his name to bothforms of his work, he has thrown the gauntlet to its numerousbut anonymous opposers: they are therefore called upon now ornever to disprove it, and the judicious and candid part of mankindto judge between the parties." Vide the Author's Preface,p. 32.
It has been a matter of astonishmentto me, whilst books are every day published to enforce the Brunoniandoctrine, that none appear to controvert it. I therefore avowto take up the gauntlet; and although I do not mean to followDr. Brown through every particular part, I shall continue to attackin the progress of this work his fundamental principles. If Isucceed in proving that they are erroneous, it is impossible thatthe application of them to the healing art can be true, or tocalculate the mischief they produce. Nothing indeed will provein a more decided manner the error of my own opinion, than establishingthe truth of Dr. Brown's. I shall certainly not conceive myselfbound to answer the suggestions of his disciples in general, orthe bad opinions of bad authors. If however Dr. Beddoes shouldthink proper to defend the system he had proclaimed, I promiseto give a reply to this very respectable Gentleman, if I findhis matter and manner deserving of one.
Of the Brunonian Doctrineof Predisposition.
It appears that Dr. JohnBrown's ideas of predisposition were very different from thoseI have endeavoured to explain. Predisposition he defines to be"a state intermediate betwixt health and disease: thepowers producing it are the same with those that produce disease."P. 59. This nonsense would be of itself perfectly unintellible,were it not for the imperfect explanation which the context affords.The context says that "predisposition arises from the sameexciting powers acting upon the same excitability from which bothhealth and disease arise, and is an intermediate state betweenboth." So far from this opinion being true, that a stateof predisposition arises from the same exciting powers actingupon the same excitability from whence both health and diseasearise, and is an intermediate state between both, that a stateof predisposition, properly defined, can only exist before theexciting powers have been applied, or before they have producedany action upon the excitability. Predispositon, as we have seen,really and truly exists in the foetal state altogether; it existsin the collapsed lungs; in the foetal stomach before it has receivedany food; in the organs of generation, and in various other parts.On the contrary, according to him (and, I may add, most othersalso), a state of predisposition is a state of postdisposition:it is predisposition ended, and action begun; it is the originof disease before the morbid actions of the system have had theirfull swing. It evidently appears, that Dr. Brown had no knowledgewhatever of the condition of the foetal state, of the state ofpredisposition in which it then exists; of the capacity of actingwhich it possesses, and of the power by which action is ultimatelyproduced.
In every system whateverthere is a tendency to evolution and health, before the tendencyto disease and death. There is a period allotted to both: whenperfection is attained, it ends, and tendency to dissolution begins.It would be far otherwise, if life were the forced state hesupposes; if it were true, "that the tendency of animalsevery moment is to dissolution; that they are kept from it notby any powers in themselves, but by foreign powers, and evenby these with difficulty, and only for a time; and then, fromthe necessity of their fate, they yield to death." If lifewere the forced state he supposes it to be, the proper applicationof his exciting powers would perpetuate animal life ad infinitum:instead of animals being forced to die, they would be forced tolive; and he might as easily resuscitate a dead animal by meansof his stimuli, as excite motion in a passive top by the actionof a whip. The whip may be compared to his exciting powers; thetop to the substance in which excitability resides; and the motionproduced by the combined agency of the whip and top together isexactly analogous to excitement or life, which is forced and whippedout by operation of his exciting powers acting on his excitability.It is very obvious indeed, that Dr. Brown grounded his systemupon the phenomena he beheld common matter display; he saw excitementproduced in the system by the introduction of different substancesof brandy, wine, &c.; he therefore referred excitement tothe brandy as its cause, in the same manner as the motion producedin the top by the action of the whip. Both cases, however, aretotally opposite and distinct: in the one case, the top is totallypassive, and yields to the moving power which the whip communicates:in the other case, the animated system constitutes the power whichacts upon the brandy; the system is the cause exciting, the brandy,the thing excited upon; and in this effort it is by which actionis produced.
A necessity evidently subsists,that the food introduced should correspond to the strength orweakness of the system. In atonic diseases, where the specificpower of the assimilating organs is extremely weak, the ordinarykinds of aliment become unfit to be introduced; and we are obligedto resort to food that possesses the strongest possible aptitudeto be acted upon in order that it may be digested: instead, therefore,of giving solid, liquid food is preferred; and we are taught byexperience that fermented liquors and animal juices possess astronger aptitude to be acted upon by the stomach than cold water,or acid or other substances of the same class. In proportion,therefore, as the strength of the system decreases, the aptitudein the aliment ought to increase: hence arises the necessity ofgiving in the latter periods of low fevers wine and brandy, whenevery other species of aliment is rejected unaltered and undigested.
It is owing to the totalconfusion of ideas, to the total ignorance of physiological knowledge,that Dr. Brown, in the very onset of his book, chap. i. art. I.under the title of what he calls Explanations, but which are reallyand truly axioms, shews himself ignorant also of the distinctionthat subsists between medicine and diet. Expl. I. "Medicineis the science of preserving the good, and preventing and curingthe ill health of animals." This proposition, I maintainit, is false: the means by which the good health of animals ispreserved, is not a science, neither does it belong to any branchof medical knowledge: it belongs to the dietetic branch, arisingfrom experience alone, and in which men totally ignorant of medicineare perfectly conversant. This knowledge extends to the wholerange of the brute and even vegetable creation, amongst whichthe science of medicine does not yet appear to have madeany progress. On the contrary, the practice of medicine is theart (not the science: our knowledge of its operation, and thesubject on which it operates, is as yet too imperfect to bringit to any scientific rule) by which disease is cured, and healthrestored; and medicine itself is the mean by which the end isattained.
Although it is the systemwhich in general possesses the power by which health is preserved,and disease prevented, or disease cured after it actually subsists,there are various complaints which arise from the applicationof specific poisons, and which can only be cured by such remediesas have the specific power of uniting with and destroying thesensible properties which those poisons possess: mercuryfor the lues, sulphur for the itch, &c. &c. These remedies,like those poisons, are taken up into the blood, or act upon thepoison in the part, and produce their beneficial effects by eliminatingand destroying the sensible qualities those contain. So totallydefective, however, is the Brunonian system, that it does notprovide at all for the specific action of specific poisons: theauthor, therefore, gets rid of the subject thus, p. 63. "Theonly cure for poisons is their early discharge from the sytem;and if, as often happens, others, by wounding an organ necessaryto life, are fatal, the effects of both are foreign from our presentpurpose, and ought to be referred to local disease." Awareof the deleterious effects which poisons produce, he consequentlyrecommends their early discharge from the system: he, notwithstandingthis acknowledgement, says, "that it is excitement alonethrough its varying degrees, that produces either health, diseaseor recovery; it alone governs both universal and local disease,neither of which ever arise from faults in the solids or fluids,but always either from increased or diminished excitement: hencethe cure is never to be directed to the state of the solids orfluids, but only to the diminution or the increase of excitement."Page 50.
Thus, then, has Dr. Brown,with one stroke of his pen, destroyed the distinction that thewisest and best Physiologists have ever made, of diseases thatwere merely accompanied by an increase or decrease of the action,either of particular parts, or of the system altogether, fromthose that were accompanied, not merely by an action too highor too low, but where the action was totally altered from thehealthy state, constituting a certain peculiarity in the natureof the disease itself, known by the appellation of specific.These specific diseases evidently arise from the specificquality and active powers of the poison, and the weakness of thesystem in resisting their operation. When these poisons thereforeproduce their effects upon the system, sometimes destroying itsaction in a few hours, or in a few moments, they ought, in suchcases, to be sedatives. Shall it be denied, when the strongestmen are suddenly destroyed by the inhalation of a few draughtsof mephitic gas, that the operation of it is not directly sedative?When the poison of the ticunas, of lauro-cerasus, and especiallyof different serpents, which Dr. Ruffel, in his late most splendidwork, has decidedly proved, destroy different animals in twentyor thirty minutes, without producing, in many instances, any sensibleaction from the time the poison is received, to the dissolutionof the animal shall it be pretended that death is not producedby a sedative effect upon the system? It required the arroganceof Dr. Brown himself to deny the existence of sedatives, to deny the specific mode of their operation, to deny thespecific nature of the disease they produce, or that the matterwhich is in consequence evolved, is capable of producing the samepoison upon another subject. Thus it is we have the poison ofplague producing plague, but not small-pox; the posion of small-poxproducing small-pox, but not measles; the poison of the itch producingitch, but not syphilis. But, according to the Brunonian system,all these substances are one and the same in their nature: theonly difference there is between them, consists in the differentdegrees of stimulant properties they possess, and in the differentproportion of excitement they produce; so that the pox and theitch, typhus fever, and plague, &c.. &c. may be curedby the same means, the nature of the stimulus alone varying indegree. It might indeed be further stated, that the cause producingthe disease, and the medicine effecting the cure, are accordingto him, in their nature, one and the same; the only differencebetween them consisting in the degree of stimulating power theyseverally possess. Hence he says, that "whether the matterof contagion act by a stimulant or a debilitating operation, itsoperation is the same with that of the ordinary power, thatis to say, the cause of disease is the same; and if, as sometimeshappens, no general affection follows the application of contagion;if no undue excess or defect of excitement is the consequence,the affection is altogether local, and foreign to this place."So far from the assertion being true, that the operation of morbidpoisons on the system arises from the stimulus they produce, beingmerely in excess or defect; and that the effect produced on thesystem is the same in kind as the nature of the cause, whetherit be above or below par; so that an high stimulus shall produceincreased excitement, and a low stimulus a weak degree of it,it is often totally otherwise.
If this were the case, theatonic symptoms, in atonic disease, ought to manifest themselvesmore eminently after the poison has been applied; at the timewhen it was in the plentitude of its power, acting upon the excitabilityin the aggregate, without abatement or division, than it is foundto do at the latter period of the disease. If this were true,the symptoms of debility, of putrefaction, and of death itself,ought to manifest themselves as soon as this imperfect stimulusis received. These atonic symptoms ought progressively to go off,in proportion as the effects are abated by the introduction ofadequate stimuli, and the poison itself weakened by division andseparation. If this were the case, typhus fever would invariablybegin with symptoms of putrefaction, and terminate with thoseof inflammation; instead of the disease beginning, as it frequentlydoes, with symptoms of inflammation , and terminating with thoseof putrefaction. It certainly is within the knowledge of mostpractioners, that some of the worst species of typhus frequentlycome on with symptoms of strong and increased action, which demanda strict antiphlogistic diet: any other regimen only tends tohurry on the symptoms of inflammation, to induce local determinations,either to the head, in producing phrenitis; to the lungs, in producingperipneumonia; or to the intestines especially, in producing enteritis.It is only at the latter period of the fever, that the real typhussymptoms manifest themselves, when one and the same poison whichproduced inflammation at first, is the remote cause of inducingat last the state of putrefaction.
The best practioners thathave written on the plague, recommend bleeding and early evacuationas the most effectual means of cure; and it is now found, by thegeneral testimony of the French physcians who have long residedin the West Indies, and by our own surgeons at this time, thatif bleeding and evacuations are immediately employed on the veryfirst onset of the yellow fever, the patient generally recovers;and it is found that the administration of mercury itself, soas to produce ptyalism, seems to have almost a specific effectin operating a cure. To expatiate on the calamites which thispernicious Brunonian doctrine has produced in its applicationto practice, will not restore the children to the parent, theparent to his children, and a multitude of brave and deservingsubjects to their country; thousands, and tens of thousands, havefallen victims to it. The Yellow fever, in the West Indies, amongstthe English, was called by the native French surgeons the brandyand madeira fever, from the quantity of spiritous liquors thatwere administered. Whilst our brave soldiers uniformly died bythis mode, the French, by adopting the antiphlogistic plan inthe strictest possible degree, generally recovered.
Equally false are his opinionswith respect to the different states of excitement that oftenexist in different parts of the same system: it is notorious toevery man of common observation, that enteritis and phrenitisfrequently come on, and are attendant on typhus fever; and theauthor of these pages can say with confidence and truth, thathe has been the means of saving the life of several patients,by taking blood from the temporal artery, at a time when therewas a brown tongue, a quick pulse, and other symptoms of low fever.On the contrary, Dr. Brown thought, page 44, "that everyaffection of a part, that occurs in general diseases, howeverformidable, is to be considered only as a part of the affectioninherent in the whole body, and the remedies are not to be directedto a part, as if the whole disease lurked there, and was onlyto be removed thence; but to the whole body, all of which it affects."
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