Richard
Lower, Hooke and Hales were probably more influenced by Descartes
than by Harvey, and they made notable contributions to experimental
physiology in England. Borelli, author of the famous work on "The Motion
of Animals" (Rome, 1680-1681), brought to the study of the action of
muscles a profound knowledge of physics and mathematics and really
founded the mechanical, or iatromechanical school. The literature and
the language of medicine became that of physics and mechanics: wheels
and pulleys, wedges, levers, screws, cords, canals, cisterns, sieves and
strainers, with angles, cylinders, celerity, percussion and resistance,
were among the words that now came into use in medical literature.
Withington quotes a good example in a description by Pitcairne, the Scot
who was professor of medicine at Leyden at the end of the seventeenth
century. "Life is the circulation of the blood. Health is its free and
painless circulation. Disease is an abnormal motion of the blood, either
general or local. Like the English school generally, he is far more
exclusively mechanical than are the Italians, and will hear nothing of
ferments or acids, even in digestion. This, he declares, is a purely
mechanical process due to heat and pressure, the wonderful effects of
which may be seen in Papin's recently invented 'digester.
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