The Chemical, or Iatrochemical, System was originated by le Bôe, commonly known as Sylvius (but who must not be confounded with the great anatomist of the same name). Le Bôe was born in Hanau in 161-4; studied in Paris, Leyden, and Basel; received his doctorate from the latter university at the age of twenty, and practiced in Switzerland with great success until 1660, when he accepted a professorship in Leyden; here he was distinguished for his eloquence, wealth, and sociability, as well as for the great number of pupils that were attracted by his clinical method of teaching. His system embraced a peculiar phantasy, being based upon the elements of chemistry, the new knowledge of the circulation, the latest physiological teachings, and the old doctrine of the spirituous or innate heat of the heart, which he claimed to have felt with his finger. He asserted his theories were founded upon experience, but the truth is, they were inaccurate deductions from experimental observations, many of which were wholly irrelevant. The majority of diseases, he taught, were produced by excess of acidity or alkalinity. For him, the three great fluids of the body were the saliva, the pancreatic fluid, and the bile, while health consisted in the undisturbed performance in the body of the process of fermentation; and the saliva was supposed to give rise to hectic fevers, because such manifest exacerbation after eating. Stereotyped theory and equally stereotyped therapeutics gained for him, for a short time, a large following, but later raised numerous opponents, who alleged that his system caused as many human lives as the whole thirty years' war. He died in 1672.
To the same iatrochemical school is generally assigned Thomas Willis, born in Oxford in 1622 (died in 1675), who rendered great service to anatomy, especially to anatomy of the nervous system, although his teaching was disfigured by certain unsupported theories. Like Van Helmont, he had been destined for theology, but turned his attention to medicine. Ultimately he became Professor of Philosophy in the University of Oxford. He first described the so-called circle of Willis, whence its name; also ascribed diseases, especially those of the blood, to fermentation, in which the vital spirits played the chief part. He accounted for hysteria, for instance, by the union of the spiritus with imperfectly purified blood.
CHAPTER VII.
Age of Rénovation—(continued).—Iatromechanical School: Santoro, 15611635. Borelli, 1608-1679. Sydenham, 1624-1689. Sir Thomas Browne, 1605-1682.—Surgery: Denis, f 1704. F. Collot, f 1706. Dionis, f!718. Baulot (Frère Jacques), 1671-1714. Scultetus, 1595-1645. Rau, f 1719. Wiseman, 1625-1686. Cowper, 1666-1709. Sir C. Wren the Discoverer of Hypodermatic Medication. Anatomical Discoveries. General Condition of the Profession during the Seventeenth Century. The Eighteenth Century. Boerhaave, 1668-1738. Gaub, 1705-1780.—Animism: Stahl, 1660-1734.—Mechanico-dynamic System: Hoffmann, 1660-1742. Cullen, 1712-1790.—Old Vienna School: Van Swieten, 1700-1772. De Haën, 1704-1776.—Vitalism: Borden, 1732-1796. Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802.
The physiology of the Iatromathematical, or Iatro-mechanical, or Iatrophysical School devoted chief consideration to the solid parts of the economy, whose form and function it strove to discover and demonstrate by the aid of exact methods,—that is, by calculation and physical apparatus. Thus, it explained digestion as mechanical trituration; secretions were referred to variation in resistance of parts in the vascular system; warmth was supposed to be due to friction of the blood-corpuscles; health consisted in the undisturbed performance of the physical and mechanical processes of the body. Diseases were explained inversely: the blood, under diseased conditions, was held to contain pointed and angular crystals, which irritated as they passed through the pores, or disturbed because they could not so pass.
The first to enunciate these views was Santoro, or Sanctorius, who flourished from 1561 to 1635, and was for a while professor at Padua. He taught how to investigate the pulse by an instrument of his own contrivance, and how to study the temperature by means of a species of thermometer, which was probably his own invention. (This instrument, by the way, was invented about this time; Drebbel [1572-1634] is regarded as the inventor of the air-thermometer, Galileo [1574-1642] of the spirit-thermometer, and Roemer [1644-1710] of the mercurial thermometer.) Santoro studied the phenomenon of transpiration, and constructed apparatus for bathing bed-ridden individuals; he found that in twenty-four hours the insensible transpiration through the skin amounted to 1 1/4 kilogrammes,—which result, compared with the results of the present day, determined by the most complete observations, is only twenty per cent, too high, and proves how accurately he investigated. The important rôle of the perspiration, which he pointed out, was made use of by the iatrochemists to vindicate their terrific sweat-cures.
Borelli (1608-1679), of Naples, is usually regarded, however, as the founder of the iatromechanical school. Of a quarrelsome disposition, he could not stay long in any one place, though he ultimately settled in Rome, where he joined the circle of savants who gathered round Christina, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, who had become a convert to Catholicism. Finally Borelli entered a monastery. His services related mainly to physiology, where, like Descartes, he followed purely mathematical principles; he explained the action of the muscles by the laws of the lever, calculated the mechanical work done by the heart, and correctly ascribed inspiration to muscular action. He was the opponent of iatrochemistry, and claimed there was no such thing as corruption of the blood. His pupils and followers—like Bellini (1643-1704). of Florence, who became professor in Pisa at the early age of nineteen, and Baglivi (1668-1707), a pupil of Malpighi, and a man of universal education—carried out and elaborated the first expressions of this author. Borelli was the author of the oft-quoted maxim: "He who diagnoses well cures well."
The iatromathematical system held ground for some time in Italy, and also found followers elsewhere. For instance, Dodart (1664-1707). of Paris, explained the voice on the mechanical principles enunciated by Borelli and by Quesnay (1694-1774). the tirst permanent secretary of the Academy of Surgery in Paris. In England this explanation was adopted by a number of followers, none of whom, however, was eminent enough to justify special mention here. In Germany it obtained a certain amount of favor, but seems not to have attracted any very eminent disciples.