North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826

by Various

It is plain he thinks, that the elements consist of a materia and qualitas; but they are elemental by the qualitas and not by the materia.

After establishing that there are four elements, which are the common and simple bases of all things, he goes on to show, that the proper proportion and admixture of these, constitute the healthy state of living bodies. If the calidum, for example, be unduly increased, the body is destroyed; if it be improperly diminished by excess of the frigidum, it will also perish. The business of the physician is to keep the proportions just and harmonious; but, as no pure element exists alone, the physician must employ the qualitas in conjunction with the materia. These (to make a phrase) substantive qualities, are found in medicines or food, which, like all objects of sense, are either cold, hot, dry, or moist, and available of course in the management of a cold, hot, dry, or moist derangement of the living body.

The elements of the human body exist in the four humours, blood, bile, atrabilis and pituita; and these four humours correspond in quality with the elements. Blood, which is the reservoir or continent of them all, is a temperate humour. Bile, being the representative of calidum, is hot and dry. Melancholy represents, in our microcosm, the element earth or siccum, and is dry and cold. But pituita, which is moist and cold, corresponds with the humidum element. Air exists in animals nearly pure, as we learn from the phenomena of the pulse and of respiration. It answers to frigidum.

He shows us in his lib. de naturalib. facultat. that, out of the humours, all the parts are formed, and these parts are either similar or dissimilar; i. e. simple or compound. Bone is a similar part, that is, it is a simple part; so is an artery, or vein, or ligament. Each of these is so constituted, as that it has a predominance of one element in its nature; and it is therefore dry, or cold, or moist, &c. But if an adust element be, by accident or disease, accumulated in a part naturally cold, the function of such part is morbidly affected. The natural tendency, however, of similar humours to unite, causes each part to receive its regular supply; a principle which Bichat has since characterized as, contractilité organique insensible.

To show the wonderful simplicity of the Galenical system, which for plainness and easy attainment may be compared with the improved nomenclature of chemistry, we will cite a passage from Argenterius, who, perhaps, was as learned in this kind of lore as any man of his time. In his Tractatio de calidi significationibus, he says; "If any body would undertake to give a general enumeration of those circumstances, in which this term calidum and the others (frigidum, humidum, &c.) are applicable to the explanation of this warmth, he shall find truly, that they are the elements, the humours, the parts, the whole body, medicines, food, air, climate, the weather, the season of the year, and even ages; for these all are either temperate, or hot, or cold, or humid, or dry."

The animal body is moved and governed by two principles; one of them corresponds to the vie animale of Bichat, and the other to the vie organique. Since the power of sensation and of voluntary or elective motion, says he, is a property of animals, and since that of growth and nutrition is common both to animals and plants; the former may be called attributes of the soul, and the latter attributes of nature. Whence we say, that animals are governed by the soul and by nature, while plants are governed by nature alone.

The powers of the body are faculties; and these are either natural, vital, or animal: but they are so subdivided, that we have as many faculties as there are sorts of action. Under the class of natural faculties, we find three principal sorts; to wit, a facultas generatrix, an auctrix, and a nutrix. But if you ask, says Galen, how many faculties there be, which result from the action of these on each other, you will find them as numerous and diverse as there are numbers and diversities of the animal parts. For example, we have an attractrix faculty, a retentrix, alteratrix, expultrix, &c. &c., all of which are variously modified, according to the nature of the similar or dissimilar parts they are exercised in, or, in other words, according to the nature of the tissues or organs, in which they reside.

Need we go further to show, that Galen, believing all matter essentially conjoined with the hypothetical caliditas, frigiditas, &c. &c., taught that it was gifted with such a degree of inherent activity, as to render it capable under certain states of combination, of exhibiting all the phenomena of organic and animal life? It is certain that he regarded these active qualities, as the causes of all the phenomena, whether of living or dead matter.—Glisson ought not certainly then to be regarded as the author of this dogma in medical philosophy. Plato certainly taught it. Van Helmont could not get along without investing matter with what he called a "seminal likeness, which is the more inward spiritual kernel of the seed," &c. But we will let him speak for himself. "Whatsoever," says V. H., "cometh into the world, must needs have the beginning of its motions, the stirrer up and inward director of generation. Therefore all things, however hard and thick they are, yet before that their soundness, they inclose in themselves an air, which representeth the inward future generation to the seed in this respect fruitful, and accompanies the thing generated, even to the end of the stage: which air, although it be in some things more plentiful, yet, in vegetables it is pressed together in the show of a juice, as also in metals it is thickened with a most thick homogeniety or sameliness of kind. Notwithstanding this gift hath happened to all things, which is called archeus, or chief workman, containing the fruitfulness of generations or seeds, as it were the internal efficient cause; I say that workman hath the likeness of the thing generated, unto the beginning whereof, he composeth the appointments of things to be done. But the chief workman consists of the conjoining of the vital air, as of the matter, with the seminal likeness, which is the more outward spiritual kernel, containing the fruitfulness of the seed; but the visible seed is only the husk of this. This image of the master workman, issuing out of the first shape or idea of its predecessor, or snatching the same to itself out of the cup or bosom of outward things, is not a certain dead image, but made famous by a full knowledge, and adorned with necessary powers of things to be done in its appointment; and so it is the first or chief instrument of life and feeling. But since every corporeal act is limited into a body, hence it comes to pass, that the archeus, the workman and governor of generations, doth clothe himself presently with a bodily clothing. For in things soulified, he walketh thorow all the dens and retiring places of his seed, and begins to transform the matter according to the perfect act of his own image; for here he placeth the heart, but there appointeth the brain, and he every where limiteth an unmoveable chief dweller, out of his whole monarchy, according to the bounds of requirance of the parts and appointments. At length that president remaineth the overseer and inward ruler of the bounds, even until death; but the other, floating about and being assigned to no member, keeps the oversight over the particular pilots of the members, being clear and never at rest or keeping holiday."

Notwithstanding the affected and euphuistic jargon of the above passages, it is evident that Van Helmont's idea is very similar to that of Galen. By seminal likeness, we are to understand an aptitude in matter to take on certain determinate forms, and this may be supposed to differ not very essentially from those laws, which govern matter in crystallization. But even this seminal likeness, as we perceive, is a sort of abstraction, very analogous to the Galenical caliditas; for it is the more inward spiritual kernel of the seed, whereby the matter is enabled to enjoy a certain degree of activity, the degree of which is much increased by the union of the air, or archeus, with it. So the caliditas of Galen, which, after all, is matter, gives to its subject the powers which it enjoys. Glisson, speaking of the natura seminalis, says that it is a certain or specific essence, superadded to mere elementary principles, by means of which mixt bodies adopt certain determinate forms, and acquire the faculty of performing essential operations, more noble than those which belong to naked elements.

We regret very much that we have been unable to procure a copy of Glisson's treatise de vita naturæ, which, so far as we know, can not be had in this country. We shall, therefore, furnish our readers with the following passage from the Biographie Medicale, from the pen of Jourdain.