In the preface to his Nova Doctrina de Functiosti bus Nohow Humane, he has given an excellent sr rangement of the general Orinciples of the objects to be kept in view in the medical treatment of diseases. He treats of this subject more at large in his treatise De Methodo Medendi, published at Montpellier, in 1777, and also in the preface to his Traits. des Mala dies Goutteuses. He considers all the different methods and indications of cure as capable of being comprehended under three heads, the natural, the analytic, and the empiric. The natural methods have for their object to promote the spontaneous operations of nature tending to restore health, or, as they have been usually termed, the vires medicatrices natures.. The analytic methods are those which pro ceed upon a previous analysis of the disease into the several simpler diseases of which it consists, or into their ultimate component symptoms, which are iso lately and successively combated by means respec tively suited to each. These are the more indicated, in proportion as the disease is more complex, and admits of being resolved into a greater number of elements. The empiric plan of treatment is directed to change the whole nature of the disease, by means of which experience has taught us the efficacy in analogous cases. These means are of three kinds ;
having either a perturbing, an imitative, or a specific operation : the first being such as, by producing ef fects of a different kind from those of the disease, tend to diminish or entirely suppress the latter (as when the paroxysm of an ague is prevented by the excitement of a strong sudorific or cathartic opera tion) ; the second, such as produce effects analogous to those which nature herself employs for the cure of the disease ; and the third, those whose salutary operation is known in no other way than as the direct result of experience.
The writings of Barthez appear to have had con siderable influence in overthrowing many of the crude and preposterous theories which had prevailed in the schools of medicine ; and, however he may have been seduced from the path of genuine philo sophy by an excessive disposition to generalize, and an overweening fondness for abstruse speculation, he still deserves the praise of being an original thinker, and of standing pre-eminent among his contempo raries for the courage with which he shook of the trammels of authority, in a university where it had ruled with despotic sway, and where the dogmas of antiquity were held in peculiar reverence. (w.)