CULLEN. 215 he continued through various difficulties, and under singular circumstances, which we should feel no pleasure in detailing. The doctrines of Cullen had previously triumphed over Boerhaave at the Me- dical Society of Edinburgh, but they now received a shock from the new pretender, who found many youthful admirers at home, — and abroad an army of partisans. The simplicity and plausibility of his theory were very attractive ; and the ease with which it was learned and practised flattered the indolent and the routinist. In these respects it re- sembled the progress of the views which Broussais has been lately disseminating in France with nearly equal success. To understand and to prac- tise both required little previous knowledge of any subject ; a single lecture unfolds both. Brown divided all diseases into two groupes, or families : the one was sthenic, the other asthenic j the former was produced by accumulated excitability, and was characterized by direct debility ; the latter was induced by exhausted excitability, and was characterized by indirect debility. His thera- peutics was as simple as his nosology ; the sthenic diseases are to be cured by bleeding, purging, and a low diet, — while the asthenic ailments demand stimulating substances of various quality and force. The ramifications and dependencies of medical theories are most curious to trace. Cullen seems to have built his structure on the foundation which Holfmann and others had laid ; Brown availed himself of the nervous energy of Cullen, and con- verted it into excitability ; Darwin, in some parts of his Zoonomia, uses nearly the language of Brown, although his practice is distinct; and the
