Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/729

Rh C U L L E N 695 no doubt that to him was due the credit of placing that science on a more philosophical basis than it had hitherto occupied, while at the same time he laboured to render it specially subservient to agriculture and other useful arts. He was himself a diligent investigator and ex perimenter, and he did much to encourage original research among his pupils, one of whom was Dr Joseph Black, who became the most celebrated chemist of his time. In 1751, a vacancy having occurred in the professorship of medicine, Cullen, through the influence of the duke of Argyll, was appointed by the king to the chair, but he still continued to lecture on chemistry. In 1756 he was elected by the town council of Edinburgh joint professor of chemistry in the university of that city, along with Dr Plummer, on whose death in the following year the sole appointment was conferred on Cullen. This chair he held for ten years his classes always increasing in numbers. He also practised his profession as a physician with eminent success. About this time he delivered, along with some of his colleagues, lectures on clinical medicine in the Royal Infirmary, which he continued to do till near the close of his caresr. This was a work for which Cullen s experience, hibits of observation, and scientific training peculiarly fitted him, and in which his popularity as a teacher, no less than his power as a practical physician, became more thva ever conspicuous. During the winter session of 1760-61 the professor of materia medica, Dr Alston, died, and the students presented a petition to Cullen to undertake the work of finishing the course of lectures on that subject, a request with which he readily complied. He delivered an entirely new course of lectures, in which the subject was treated in such a masterly and scientific as well as interesting and practical manner as to gain the high commendations of his students and of the medical profession generally, by whom copies of his pupils notes were in great request. An incorrect edition of the lectures was te:i years afterwards published in London without Dr Cullen s knowledge, and widely circulated throughout Europe. On the death of Dr Whytt, the professor of the institutes of medicine, in 1766, the patrons offered the chair to Dr Cullen, who accepted it, resigning that of chemistry, in which he was succeeded by Dr Black, who was then professor of chemistry in Glasgow. In the same year Dr John Gregory was appointed professor of practice of physic on the death of Dr Rutherford. For this chair Cullen was likewise a candidate, and a strong effort was made to induce the patrons to confer the appointment on him, but without success. la 1769 an arrangement was, however, entered into between Drs Gregory and Cullen, by which they agreed to deliver alternate courses on the theory and practice of physic. This arrangement proved eminently satisfactory in the hands of these two distinguished men, but it was brought to a close by tho sudden and pre mature death of Gregory in 1773. Cullen was then appointed sole professor of the practice of physic, and he continued in this office till a few months before his death, which took place on 5th February 1790. Cullen s fame rests on his great power and influence as a teacher, and on his important contributions to theoretical and practical medicine. As a lecturer Cullen appears to have stood unrivalled in his day. His clearness of statement and power of impart ing interest to the most abstruse topics were the con spicuous features of his teaching, and in his various capacities as a scientific lecturer, a physiologist, and a practical physician, he was ever surrounded with large and increasing classes of intelligent pupils, to whom his eminently suggestive mode of instruction was specially attractive. The grasp and vigour of his mind were shown in the facility with which he mastered the many different branches of medical knowledge which he taught; while his scientific spirit equally appears in his refusal to accept what he describes as the &quot; false facts &quot; so prevalent in his day, and by the zeal with which he pursued original observation and experimental research both as a chemist and as a physician, with the view of arriving at truth. Cullen has been frequently represented as a purely speculative physician; but this view is far from just. It is to be borne in mind that in his time medicine was to a large extent mixed up with metaphysical speculation, that its ascertained facts were few, and that the science of physiology was then in its infancy. If, therefore, in opposing what he held to be false theories he was led 1o advance new views and speculations of his own, still no one who attentively reads the works of this great physician and teacher can fail to perceive that his constant aim was in the direction of disengaging his science from the hypothetical mazes in which it was involved, and placing it upon the solid basis of fact. Previous to the days of Cullen, and during his early life, the medical philosophy or medical doctrines of Boerhaave were universally taught in the schools. Boerhaave attempted to combine into one system the vital philosophy of Hippocrates (the vis medicatrix naturae), the chemico- humoral principle of Paracelsus, the mechanical doctrines of Bellini, and a few of the other doctrines taught by former medical philosophers. He attributed, however, more to the chemical and mechanical forces than to the powers of life, and of course embraced a large portion of the doctrine of the humoral pathologists. Cullen, seeing that many of the facts then known were irreconcilable with Boerhaave s doctrines, became their warm opponent, especially taking offence at those doctrines which attributed almost every disease to a vitiation of the fluids of the body. Indeed, he might almost be said to have adopted as his motto the celebrated aphorism of Hoffmann, &quot; Universe pathologia longe rectius atque facilius ex vitio motuum microcosmicorum in solidis, quam ex variis affectionibus vitiosorum humorum, deduci atque explicari possit,adeoque omnis generis nervosi affectionibus sint referenda).&quot; Living at the time he did, when the doctrines of the humoral pathologists were carried to an extreme extent, and witnessing the ravages which disease made on the solid structures of the body, it was not surprising that he should oppose a doctrine which appeared to him to lead to a fal;e practice and to fatal results, and adopt one which attributed more to the agency of the solids, and very little to that of the fluids of the body. The Cullenian system was certainly an immense improvement on those which pre ceded it, and has served as a valuable stepping-stone for the rational doctrines which now prevail, more especially those which relate to the influence of the nervous system alike in healthy and morbid action. He was obliged to introduce the doctrine of a spasm in the extreme vessels in order to account, on his theory, for many of the phenomena of disease ; still we cannot refuse to lini the honour of having been an able and successful improver in medical science. His classification of diseases was remarkable for its simplicity and clearness. He divided diseases into four great classes 1st, Pyrexiac, or febrile disease, as typhus fever ; 2d, Neuroses, or nervous diseases, as epilepsy ; 3d, Cachexia?, or diseases resulting from bad habit of body, as scurvy ; and 4th, Locales, or local diseases, as cancer. His nosological arrangement has served to a considerable extent as the groundwork of modern nosologies, and was a great improvement, both in simplicity and clearness, on the involved productions of his predecessors. Cullen s chief works are First Lines of the Practice of Physic,, Edin. 1774, 4 vols. 8vo ; second edition, 1783 ; Institutions of