Felix Vicq d’Azyr (1748-1794) was one of the zoologists whose researches exercised an important influence on the progress of anatomy. He investigated the origin of the brain and nerves, and the comparative anatomy of the vocal organs.
Sir Thomas Browne, M.D., of Norwich (1605-1682), the author of the immortal Religio Medici, studied medicine at Montpellier, Padua, and Leyden. He was a man who, in his own words, could not do nothing. Though he wrote a famous work on Vulgar Errors, he could not rise superior to the commonest one of his time—the belief in witchcraft.
Thomas Willis, M.D. (1621-1675), was celebrated for his researches in the anatomy and pathology of the brain. Unfortunately he neglected observation for theorising.
Dr. Freind said of Willis that he was the first inventor of the nervous system. Willis taught that the cerebrum is the seat of the intellectual faculties, and the source from which spring the voluntary motions. He consigned the involuntary motions to the cerebellum; these go on in a regular manner, without our knowledge and independently of our will. He supposed that the nerves of voluntary motions arise chiefly from the cerebrum, and those of the involuntary motions from the cerebellum or its appendages.[902]
Willis deserves to be gratefully remembered in medical history as the great reformer of pharmacology. Having been led to consider how it is that medicines act on the various organs of the body, he reflected that there was usually very little relationship between the means of cure and the physiological and pathological processes to be influenced. Medicines were given at random. Mineral poisons, such as antimony, were recklessly prescribed, to the destruction, not of the disease only, but too frequently of the patient also. “So heedlessly,” says Willis, “are these executioners in the habit of sporting with the human body, while they are led to prepare and administer these dangerous medicines, not by any deliberation, nor by the guidance of any method, but by mere hazard and blind impulse.”[903]
The object of Willis was to establish a direct and reasonable relationship between the physiological and morbid conditions of the body on the one hand, and the indications for cure and the therapeutic means by which these were to be brought about on the other.[904] It was a great task, and Willis did not wholly succeed; but his method was the right one, however grievously he failed to carry it into practice, for he prescribed blood, the human skull, salt of vipers, water of snails and earthworms, millipeds, and other things which he ought to have known could have no effect on any disease.[905] We must not be too severely critical, for Willis was the first to attempt the reformation of this degraded state of Materia Medica.
The state of Materia Medica (or the drugs and chemicals used by the physician) during the end of the seventeenth and the earlier part of the eighteenth century, was remarkable, says Dr. Thomson,[906] for four circumstances.
First, there was a great number of remedies strongly recommended for the cure of diseases; but many of them were inert and useless, and thus the practitioner was perplexed and confused.
Secondly, the popular confidence in all these medicines was irrational and extreme.
Thirdly, it was the custom to combine in one prescription a great number of ingredients. The Pharmacopœias of the period contain formulæ which embraced in some instances from twenty-four up to as many as fifty-two ingredients. Sydenham is the first who exhibits any tendency to greater simplicity in his prescriptions.