History of scientific ideas

by William Whewell

The Sylvian doctrine was often combined with some of the notions of the Cartesian system of philosophy; but this mixture I shall not notice, since my present object is to trace the history of a mere chemical physiology as one of the unsuccessful attempts at a philosophy of life. With various modifications, this doctrine was diffused over Europe. It gave rise to several controversies, which turned upon the questions of the novelty of the doctrine, and the use of chemical remedies to which it pointed, as well as upon its [179] theoretical truth. We need not dwell long upon these controversies, although they were carried on with no small vehemence in their time. Thus the school of Paris opposed all innovation, remained true to the Galenic dogmatism, and declared itself earnestly against all combination of chemistry with medicine; and even against the chemical preparation of medicaments. Guy Patin, a celebrated and learned professor of that day, declares[20] that the chemists are no better than forgers, and ought to be punished as such. The use of antimonial medicines was a main point of dispute between the iatrochemists and their opponents; Patin maintained that more men had been destroyed by antimony than by the thirty years’ war of Germany; and endeavoured to substantiate this assertion by collecting all such cases in his Martyrologium Antimonii. It must have been a severe blow to Patin when[21] in 1666, the Doctors of the Faculty of Paris, assembled by command of the parliament, declared, by a majority of ninety-two voices, that the use of antimonial medicines was allowable and laudable, and when all attempts to set aside this decision failed.

[20] Spr. 349.

[21] Ib. iv. 350.

Florentius Schuyl of Leyden sought to recommend the iatrochemical doctrines, by maintaining that they were to be found in the Hippocratic writings; nor was it difficult to give a chemical interpretation of the humoral pathology of the ancients. The Italian[22] physicians also, for the most part, took this line, and attempted to show the agreement of the principles of the ancient school of medicine with the new chemical notions. This, indeed, is the usual manner in which the diffusion of new theoretical ideas becomes universal.

[22] Ib. 368.

The progress of the chemical school of medicine in England[23] requires our more especial notice. Willis was the most celebrated champion of this sect. He assumed, but with modifications of his own, the three Paracelsian principles, Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury; considered digestion as the effect of an acid, and [180] explained other parts of the animal economy by distillation, fermentation, and the like. All diseases arise from the want of the requisite ferment; and the physician, he says[24], may be compared to a vintner, since both the one and the other have to take care that the necessary fermentations go on, that no foreign matter mixes itself with the wine of life, to interrupt or derange those operations. In the middle of the seventeenth century, medicine had reached a point in which the life of the animal body was considered as merely a chemical process; the wish to explain everything on known principles left no recognized difference between organized and unorganized bodies, and diseases were treated according to this delusive notion. The condition of chemistry itself during this period, though not one of brilliant progress, was sufficiently stable and flourishing to give a plausibility to any speculation which was founded on chemical principles; and the real influence of these principles in the animal frame could not be denied.

[23] Ib. 353.

[24] Spr. 354.

The iatrochemists were at first resisted, as we have seen, by the adherents of the ancient schools; they were attacked on various grounds, and finally deposed from them ascendancy by another sect, which we have to speak of, as the iatromathematical, or mechanical school. This sect was no less unsatisfactory and erroneous in its positive doctrines than the chemists had been; for the animal frame is no more a mere machine than a mere laboratory: but it promoted the cause of truth, by detecting and exposing the insufficient explanations and unproved assertions of the reigning theory.

Boyle was one of the persons who first raised doubts against the current chemical doctrines of his time, as we have elsewhere noted; but his objections had no peculiar physiological import. Herman Coming[25], the most learned physician of his time, a contemporary with Sylvius, took a view more pertinent to our present object; for he not only rejected the alchemical [181] and hermetical medicines, but taught expressly that chemistry, in its then existing condition, was better fitted to be of use in the practice of pharmacy, than in the theories of physiology and pathology. He made the important assertion, also, that chemical principles do not pre-exist as such in the animal body; and that there are higher powers which operate in the organic world, and which do not depend on the form and mixture of matter.