In Europe at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth a significant change was taking place in the perception, description, definition, and ordering of medical knowledge. It is during this time that “John Brown (1735-1788) founded the Brunonian system or theory of medicine. According to which, physical life consists in a peculiar excitability, the normal excitement produced by all the agents which affect the body constituting the healthy condition, while …showed first 75 words of 1669 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1669 total…is difficult to say how useful it was for the progression of medicinal knowledge of the time. I could almost safely argue that the benefit that the system served was the benefit of showing people what not to do. The standard "heroic" therapy was not the only risk to the sick; in the mid 1700s, historian John Bass estimated that more deaths resulted from Brunonianism than from The French Revolution or the Napoleonic wars combined.