No sooner had Weikard adopted
[Footnote: This theory was afterwards greatly modified in Germany; and,
judging from the random glances which I throw on these subjects, I
believe that in this recast it still keeps its ground in that country.]
and made it known in Germany, than Kant became familiar with it. He
considered it not only as a great step taken for medicine, but even for
the general interests of man, and fancied that in this he saw something
analogous to the course which human nature has held in still more
important inquiries, viz.: first of all, a continual ascent towards the
more and more elaborately complex, and then a treading back, on its own
steps, towards the simple and elementary. Dr. Beddoes's Essays, also,
for producing by art and curing pulmonary consumption, and the method
of Reich for curing fevers, made a powerful impression upon him; which,
however, declined as those novelties (especially the last) began to
sink in credit. As to Dr. Jenner's discovery of vaccination, he was
less favorably disposed to it; he apprehended dangerous consequences
from the absorption of a brutal miasma into the human blood, or at
least into the lymph; and at any rate he thought, that, as a guarantee
against the variolous infection, it required a much longer probation.
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