Ninety-seven per cent. of all diseases, he declared, require a “stimulating treatment.” One good result of this theory was that it introduced a milder treatment of disease than the bleeding and purging doctors of his time advocated. The theory was called the Brunonian, and received greater attention in Italy than in England.
John Morgan, M.D. (1736-1789), was born in Philadelphia. He wrote an essay on his graduation at Edinburgh (1763), wherein “he maintained that pus is a secretion from the vessels, and in this view anticipated John Hunter.”[1005]
Robert James, M.D. (1703-1776), was the inventor of the celebrated fever-powder which bears his name.
Francis de Valingen, M.D. (1725-1805), was a Swiss who practised in London. He was the first to suggest the employment of chloride of arsenic in practice. His preparation was admitted into the London Pharmacopœia.
Erasmus Darwin (1701-1802), a physician of Lichfield, was a true poet of science. His fame rests on the Botanic Garden, in which he describes the Loves of the Plants according to the Linnæan system. His most important scientific work is his Zoonomia, a pathological work, and a treatise on generation, in which he anticipated the views of Lamarck. He asks: “Would it be too bold to imagine that in the great length of time since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the Great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down these improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!” He believed that plants possess sensation and volition.
Edward Spry, M.D. (lived in 1756). At the fire of Eddystone lighthouse an old man was injured by the fall of a quantity of molten lead upon him. Dying of his injuries in twelve days, he was examined by Dr. Spry, who stated that he found in the stomach a lump of lead three and three-quarter inches long by one and a half in breadth. As no surgeon would believe this story, Dr. Spry performed a number of experiments upon animals by pouring molten lead down their throats, with the result that at the Royal Society, Dr. Huxham, in his letter to Sir William Watson, “testified to his own belief in Mr. Spry’s veracity.”[1006]
John Coakley Lettsom, M.D. (1744-1815), was a learned and amiable philanthropist, who published several important medical and scientific works. His Reflections on the Treatment and Cure of Fevers and The Natural History of the Tea Tree appeared in 1772. He wrote the following lines:—
“When patients sick to me apply,
I physics, bleeds, and sweats ’em.
Sometimes they live, sometimes they die: