Even more widespread became the
theories of a pupil of Cullen's, John Brown, who regarded excitability
as the fundamental property of all living creatures: too much of this
excitability produced what were known as sthenic maladies, too little,
asthenic; on which principles practice was plain enough. Few systems of
medicine have ever stirred such bitter controversy, particularly on the
Continent, and in Charles Creighton's account of Brown(7) we read
that as late as 1802 the University of Gottingen was so convulsed by
controversies as to the merits of the Brunonian system that contending
factions of students in enormous numbers, not unaided by the professors,
met in combat in the streets on two consecutive days and had to be
dispersed by a troop of Hanoverian horse.
(7) Dictionary of National Biography, London, 1886, VII, 14-17.
But the man who combined the qualities of Vesalius, Harvey and Morgagni
in an extraordinary personality was John Hunter. He was, in the first
place, a naturalist to whom pathological processes were only a small
part of a stupendous whole, governed by law, which, however, could
never be understood until the facts had been accumulated, tabulated and
systematized. By his example, by his prodigious industry, and by his
suggestive experiments he led men again into the old paths of Aristotle,
Galen and Harvey.
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