artially true, the wrong ones still
play a prominent if not a very creditable part. Thus the medical systems
of William Cullen (1710-1790), and John Brown (1735-1788), while doing
little towards the actual advancement of scientific medicine, played
so conspicuous a part in so wide a field that the "Brunonian system" at
least must be given some little attention.

According to Brown's theory, life, diseases, and methods of cure are
explained by the property of "excitability." All exciting powers were
supposed to be stimulating, the apparent debilitating effects of some
being due to a deficiency in the amount of stimulus. Thus "the whole
phenomena of life, health, as well as disease, were supposed to consist
of stimulus and nothing else." This theory created a great stir in the
medical world, and partisans and opponents sprang up everywhere. In
Italy it was enthusiastically supported; in England it was strongly
opposed; while in Scotland riots took place between the opposing
factions. Just why this system should have created any stir, either for
or against it, is not now apparent.

Like so many of the other "theorists" of his century, Brown's practical
conclusions deduced from his theory (or perhaps in spite of it) were
generally beneficial to medicine, and some of them extremely valuable in
the treatment of diseases. He first advocated the modern stimulant, or
"feeding treatment" of fevers, and first recognized the usefulness of
animal soups and beef-tea in certain diseases.

THE SYSTEM OF HAHNEMANN

Just at the close of the century there came into prominence the school
of homoeopathy, which was destined to influence the practice of medicine
very materially and to outlive all the other eighteenth-century schools.
It was founded by Christian Samuel Friedrich Hahnemann (1755-1843), a
most remarkable man, who, after propounding a theory in his younger days
which was at least as reasonable as most of the existing theories, had
the misfortune to outlive his usefulness and lay his doctrine open to
ridicule by the unreasonable teachings of his dotage.

Hahnemann rejected all the teachings of morbid anatomy and pathology
as useless in practice, and propounded his famous "similia similibus
curantur"--that all diseases were to be cured by medicine which in
health produced symptoms dynamically similar to the disease under
treatment. If a certain medicine produced a headache when given to a
healthy person, then this medicine w