Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/164

 that produced the malady. When, for example, the secretion from an organ or part was excessive, they inferred that the pores of such a part were relaxed and distended, thus permitting an increased flow; and when the secretion was less than it should be, they decided that the pores were contracted. The status mixtus had reference to those cases in which a condition of relaxation was observed in one part of the body, while that of contraction was noted in another.

Neuburger mentions the fact that the Methodists were somewhat arbitrary in their classification of the different diseases, most of the acute maladies being placed by them under the heading Status strictus, while they assigned the majority of the chronic affections to the category of ''Status laxus''.

The effect of the tendency of the Methodists to classify and simplify all the departments of medicine was not wholly beneficial. It conveyed to many the impression that medicine might readily be learned in the course of a few months, and thus offered the temptation to inferior men to choose the career of physician; and yet, on the other hand, it infused into the art the essentially Roman characteristics of orderliness, simplicity and efficiency. Anatomy, for example, was studied only so far as a knowledge of this department of medicine was necessary to render the physician familiar with the location, general character and relations of the different organs. There was one field, however, in which the adherents of this school displayed a high degree of excellence, viz., in their descriptions of disease; and this is especially true of those written by Caelius Aurelianus (fourth century A. D.), whose manner of handling the subject of differential diagnosis is far more thorough and satisfactory than that of any of the medical authors who preceded him.

In their treatment of disease, the Methodists were largely guided by the principle of contraria contrariis,—i.e., in those cases in which, to the best of their belief, a ''status laxus'' existed, they administered astringents, in the hope of thereby bringing the parts back more nearly to a contracted condition; and, vice versa, when the diagnosis