Note 82 — Part I. FROM HIS YOUTH TO HIS APPOINTMENT IN INDIA.

Brunonian System.—Medical doctrines first broached by Dr. John Brown, in his “Elementæ Medicinæ,” in 1780. He imagined that the body was endowed with a certain quantity of excitability, and that every external agent acted as a stimulant on this property of excitability. Health consisted in a just proportion of stimulation, but when this was carried too far, exhaustion, or direct debility, was the consequence, and when not far enough, indirect debility. The diseases which he supposed to arise from one or other of those two states were classed into two orders, the sthenic and the asthenic. Brown was considered no great prophet in his own country, but he exercised considerable influence on the medical doctrines of the Italian schools, which to this day are somewhat tinctured with Brunonianism.