One of the most ingenious fictions of those speculators who have
endeavoured to explain the mysteries of our wonderful organization, was
perhaps the Archeus of Van Helmont, a term derived from [Greek: arche],
_origin_, _principle_, _authority_, _power_. According to the doctrines of
this physician, the archeus was an internal agent that commanded and
regulated all the vital functions. I cannot better describe it than by
partly borrowing the language of the founder of the doctrine.
The archeus and matter are the natural causes of all. The molecules of
matter, essentially inert, receive from this principle their movements,
their order, their distribution, their conformation: the archeus is the
internal agent that penetrates them, the nucleus of their inspiration; it
is the mould in which they are elaborated, brought into form by this
plastic influence meeting in this material substance the requisite
docility to realize its ideas of perfection. Thus the archeus is an active
and an intelligent power, possessing the faculty of amalgamating and
identifying itself with matter; penetrating its inmost recesses, it
modifies and changes each particle of matter, producing that
incomprehensible series of oscillations of spontaneousness and
equilibrium, that catenation and marvellous automatism, that constitute
the consciousness of our existence, and whence springs the only notion we
can form of its causation. It is the archeus that presides over our sense
of smelling, of tasting, and consequently the selection of our food; it is
_he_ that dissolves it in our digestive organs, liquefies it, and prepares
it for due assimilation; it is he that imparts a conservative action to
the blood, and converts this vital fluid into bone and muscle. Should any
particle of our aliments have escaped from this transforming power, these
substances become foreign bodies, irritating by their presence this
sovereign power, calling forth his energies and his activity, and exciting
his indignation and wrath by their repeated provocations. His just fury
stimulates and accelerates the vital functions; but, instead of wreaking
its vengeance on external matter, it overwhelms all internal obstacles,
whether diffused in the system or concentrated on any given point. It is
this tumultuous confusion that constitutes maladies, which arise from two
evident causes,--an alteration in matter and a reaction of the archeus.
Of these two morbid elements, the first is susceptible of a thousand
varieties both in nature and extent, and therefore produces as many
modifications in the corrective power. Then does the archeus, threatened
on different points in different manners, regulate his plans and
operations both of defence and of attack, selecting his weapons according
to the nature of his antagonists. In this mutual struggle our archeus
wisely checks the impetuosity of his onset, husbands his forces, and
merely detaches them from the main body according to the circumstances of
the conflict; thus ever keeping a powerful reserve. It is this wisdom of
conduct that ultimately restores tranquillity, and compels the rebellious
molecules to submit to the laws of organization. For what constitutes the
cure of a disease, whether obtained by nature or by art? Nothing more than
the dignified repose of the mighty archeus, when the fire of his wrath has
consumed his foes. Diseases, therefore, are simply the execution of vast
and complex projects that inspire the archeus, and which he carries into
execution as the statuary embodies on the marble the conceptions of his
genius. When the morbid idea is in conformity with his plans, a favourable
result will ensue; if, on the contrary, the archeus labours under a
misconception, if he is thrown by erroneous impressions into disordinate
steps, then may this power, excited without a just motive, or a
determinate and proper object, turn its arms against itself, and destroy
the ties that united it to matter. It is then that art, whose aim it is to
meet the foe with his own weapons, must have recourse to medicine for the
purpose of rousing the torpor of the archeus, reanimate his energies if he
droops, overthrow him if he becomes unruly, and finally compel him to
yield, by a salutary terror; forcibly bringing him back to that judicious
equilibrium in action, when all the functions contribute in harmony and
concert to the general welfare of the system.
Such were the truly poetical ideas of Van Helmont, who might have written
an epic on the government, revolutions, and battles, in the archean state,
similar to the Holy War of our ingenious Bunyan; for, like the cobler
poet, our theorist divided and subdivided his legions and their officers.
The archeus is merely the sovereign commander, whose head-quarters and
throne were in the stomach; all the other viscera have distinct
commandants, receiving their orders from their chief, who employed the
nerves of his _aides-de-camp_. Nor was it an easy matter to keep all these
captains in a proper state of discipline. Their irregularities occasioned
constant tumults; for the court of the archeus, like all other courts, was
most depraved and capricious in its practices, and intriguing in all its
machinations, and the archeus had great trouble in keeping his
subordinates in a proper state.
The most rebellious of his generals was the one who commanded the uterine
district. There it was in vain that the articles of war were constantly
read,--that solitary confinement and prison-diet were resorted to. Its
constant mutinies not only demanded the utmost vigilance, but it was no
easy matter to prevent its dangerous influence from contaminating the
other branches of the service; and treasonable correspondences were not
unfrequently discovered with the staff of the brain. This rebellious
province, indeed, excited incessant apprehension, constantly agitated the
entire commonwealth, and, on the plea of national welfare and liberty, it
hoisted at times a standard of defiance, and precipitated the country in
all the miseries of civil war; the more to be dreaded, as it always put
forth the most specious pleas, destroying with words of peace.
This whimsical doctrine is not unlike the Platonic theories, and resembles
the _naturism_ or [Greek: enormon] of Hippocrates, and the autocracy of
the soul, of Stahl. Van Helmont not only established his archei in
animals, but in plants, and even in our food. The archeus of man he
sometimes called _ens seminale_, _ens spirituale_, _impetum faciens_,
_aura vitalis_. Well aware that the most powerful despot cannot reign
without rival powers, Van Helmont admitted certain _imperia in imperio_:
for instance, there was a troublesome minister in his own cabinet, whom
the archeus frequently could not control,--one _pylorus rector_, or master
of the ceremonies; then he had to apprehend the power of a secret faculty
possessed by the stomach and spleen, which he called a _duumvirate_,--_jus
duumvirat'_. The sensitive and immortal soul was another check on his
sway; while the spirit of life residing in the blood was not easily
managed. All these vexations occasioned frequent attacks of illness in the
monarch, and Van Helmont has described these several affections; for,
although he possessed the power of conceiving and executing plans of
disease, like many physicians, he did not know how to cure himself.
When we consider that systems similar to this absurd doctrine, if not more
extravagant, have ruled the medical schools for centuries with a despotic
sway, can we marvel that medicine should have incurred the invectives of
scepticism, or the scurrility of wits? In the very ratio of their
absurdity have these flitting systems been maintained with scholastic
fury; their proselytes would have vied in excesses with monastic
persecutors, had they been able to assume a religious mask. It is painful
to observe that unbelief and impious ridicule in theologic matters may be
referred to the same causes as medical scepticism,--the vain and
presumptuous endeavour of man to explain that which the CREATOR has most
probably willed to remain inexplicable. Instead of wisely referring all
that is mysterious to the Almighty Power that knows no limit, man has
sought to explain and comment upon human principles, nay upon human
motives; and when they could no longer attribute evil to GOD, they crossed
the _pons asinorum_ to call in the Devil. In like manner, when they
proudly fancied that they had regulated all the functions of the animal
economy in that harmonious manner that they were modest enough to call
admirable and wondrous, they endeavoured to account for a derangement of
this equilibrious condition, either by the introduction of some evil
spirit, or the unmanageable rebellion of some organ, some principle, some
agency, and for this purpose they gave individuality and specific vitality
to those agents, each of the _dramatis personae_ having a particular part
to perform in bringing on a tragic catastrophe or a happy _denouement_ of
the drama of life.
Let not the learned doctors of modern schools exclaim, that these were the
errors of former days and of dark ages. They themselves are grovelling and
groping in the dark whenever they pretend to fly from the trammels of
empiricism, and, like our forefathers, account for what is unaccountable.
But, above all, let them be meek and modest (if they can) in passing
judgment upon others, and inscribe upon the doors of their splendid
libraries the saying of the olden sage, "All that we know is our own
ignorance."