large amount of truth. It was said during last
century that the majority of deaths in England
proceeded from repletion  — literally, from an
excess of food. Probably the deaths from this
cause are fewer now than they were a hundred
or even fifty years ago, for our habits of life are
less gross than formerly, and active exercise is
more encouraged. In Italy, at all times, greater
moderation in eating and drinking has been
observed than in our cold and depressing northern
climate, where the fire of life burns dimly and
reluctantly, unless stimulated by a generous
diet. Yet Santorio  — whose observations appear
to have been entirely confined to his own country
— came to the conclusion that the retention of the
superfluities of food in the system is the principal
cause of disease, and that a free transpiration
through the pores is the highest curative operation
in nature. He published his views in a
small treatise, entitled Ars de Staticâ Medicinâ,
&c., in which he maintains that, if the pores be
stopped, or imperfectly opened, the humours
which should have exhaled through those outlets
become corrupted, and that this putrefaction is
communicated to the spirits, to the blood, and to
all the inward and outward parts of the body.
Transpiration being impaired, all the functions of
nature are thrown out; and if the natural heat
of the blood, or heat artificially produced, do
not expel the peccant humours by the pores,
malignant fever sets in. Any food which, being
in excess of what is required by the system, is
not well digested, causes an obstruction of the
pores; the obstruction leads to a corruption of
the superabundant matter; and the result is felt
in the painful forms of lassitude, restlessness of
spirits, and an extraordinary heaviness and
torpor of the physical powers. The want of
perspiration when the extremities are cold in a
fever cannot fail to result in death, according to
Santorio, unless nature or art restore the natural
warmth and the customary action of the skin.
He adds, that old men frequently die of
suffocation, owing to the non-concoction of the
grosser elements; and that sometimes young
people, even when sober and temperate, are
struck with sudden death, in consequence of
imperfect transpiration. These doctrines rapidly
spread over Europe, and the Sieur Cusac, a
French gentleman of the seventeenth century,
was so much struck with them, that he devoted
years of study to the discovery of some external
remedy capable of exciting perspiration, and
finally hit upon a certain preparation of spirits
of wine, with which he is said to have performed
extraordinary cures.

We now know a great deal more of the structure
of the human body and of its functions
than Santorio or any of his contemporaries; but
the Italian undoubtedly did good service to
medical science by first calling attention to the
action of the skin, and to its important bearings
on health and disease. He may have been a
fanatico on that one point, and nobody in these
days of advanced knowledge would pin his faith
with implicit confidence on the pathological
doctrines of the seventeenth century; but the
importance of a free action of the pores at all
times, and especially in fevers, is now universally
conceded. It is well known that animals
prevented from perspiring die of suffocation,
the same as if deprived of air, though the process is
longer. The skin is, in fact, a respiratory organ,
which actually helps us to breathe. This seems
to have been foreshadowed by Santorio, who,
moreover, has other claims to respectful treatment
on the part of the medical profession. He was a
man of laborious research, and of great mechanical
skill  — a genuine inquirer into facts, not simply a
dreaming speculator. He made an instrument for
measuring the force of the pulse, as well as several
surgical implements not previously in use. The
thermometer having at that time been recently
invented, he seized on it as an aid to medical
research, using it as a means of measuring the
heat of the skin in different complaints, and at
the various crises of a malady. All physicians
now regard the thermometer as a valuable ally
in serious cases.

The name of the old Paduan medico is now
seldom pronounced in this part of Europe,
though the College of Physicians at Venice, in
gratitude for a legacy which he bequeathed them
— and, let us hope, also in acknowledgment of
his genius and devotion to his art  — annually
commemorate his theories in a laudatory
harangue. But Addison makes him the subject
of a humorous article in the twenty-fifth
number of the Spectator. The essayist invents the
fiction of a letter addressed to him by " one of
that sickly tribe who are commonly known by
the name of Valetudinarians," who, having
accidentally fallen in with the works of Santorio,
resolved to direct himself by the rules there set
forth. Accordingly, he obtains a chair such as
that invented by the Paduan, and weighs
himself at all times and seasons with the utmost
scrupulosity. " I compute myself, when I am
in full health," he writes, "to be precisely two
hundred weight, falling short of it about a
pound after a day's fast, and exceeding it as
much after a very full meal; so that it is my
continual employment to trim the balance
between these two volatile pounds in my constitution.
I do not dine and sup by the clock, but
by my chair; for, when that informs me my
pound of food is exhausted, I conclude myself to
be hungry, and lay in another with all diligence. I
allow myself, one night with another, a quarter
of a pound of sleep, within a few grains, more
or less; and if upon rising I find that I have
not consumed my whole quantity, I take out
the rest in my chair." This irony is in
Addison's finest style of polished and lambent
humour; but we are not to suppose that his
satire was directed against Santorio, his theories,
or his investigations. He merely seeks to
ridicule the absurd formalism of those who would
direct the subtlest natural operations by cut-
and-dried rules of art. There are many such
persons at all times, and they amply merit the
sharpest flagellations of wit; but Santorio
was a man of science, painfully inquiring into
scientific laws, and his name deserves to be