The Brunonian system of medicine (Brunonianism) is a theory of medicine which regards and treats disorders as caused by defective or excessive excitation with respect to physiology. It was developed by the Scottish physician John Brown and is outlined in his 1780 publication Elementa Medicinae. It drew on the theories of his teacher William Cullen, but whereas Cullen set out to create a systematic nosology of diseases, Brown argued for a unified model in which all disease was related to stimulation. The system was based on, according to the 1791 book Heirs of Hippocrates as a system "based on the principle that life is maintained by a state of externally provoked excitability within living tissues".
Although Brown's theory never became very popular in Britain, it had temporary success in America, Italy, and the German-speaking part of Europe.
Life of John Brown
John Brown was born in 1735 and died in 1788, not very long after having written his master work, Elementa Medicinae (Elements of Medicine) in 1780. He was apparently studied to be a clergyman, but then studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and received his degree at St Andrew's. He commenced his medical practice in Edinburgh, but opposition to his new ideas, as set out in his Elementa Medicinae resulted in his move to London in 1786.
Brown worked with and studied under one of the foremost medical practitioners and theoreticians of the time, William Cullen. Cullen and Brown, however, had a falling out. Brown was likely influenced by Cullen's ideas on the capacity for nerves and muscles to be excited or stimulated (similar to the work of Haller in Germany on 'irritability'), but Brown looked at the issue of excitation in a broader and more dynamic manner. One scholarly article relates the influence of Galvanism and Mesmerism on Brown's work. Brown himself relates in the Introduction to his magnum opus, Elementa Medicinae, that his ideas came from an attack of gout, but in a period when his dietary intake was less rather than more. Since the cause of gout was then held to be a problem of excess, he was put on a strict vegetable diet with no wine or alcohol for a year, but instead of the promised cure, he had four "exceedingly violent" episodes. This led him to consider the effects of different foods and drinks and try a different approach, that of an invigorating or stimulating diet which proved successful. According to the Encyclopædia Perthensis, "Thus, from personal experience of the inefficacy of the former medical practice in the gout, he was led to review the whole old system of medicine."
Elementa Medicinae and Coleridge/Beddoes
Brown's Elementa Medicinae was published in 1780 and followed several years later by Brown's own version in English. Brown did not live to see his work achieve any great acceptance, but in 1795, Dr. Thomas Beddoes, one of the leading physicians of his day, undertook a translation (claiming Brown's was deficient), accompanied by an extensive introduction to explain Brown's system. Beddoes was also a close friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and did much to introduce him to Brown's ideas as well as to the various German writings on the Brunonian system, which appeared suddenly after 1795 as well, mainly through the writings of Dr. Andreas Röschlaub. One source states that Beddoes' influence was "the most likely source" of Coleridge's plan to go to Germany, and that Coleridge's philosophical interests there were often "anchored in medical debates." (Coleridge, Thomas Beddoes and Brunonian Medicine), Coleridge several times refers to Brown as a genius.
:In a letter to the publishers Taylor and Hessey, of 1819, Coleridge ranked Brown alongside Cicero, Luther, Giordano Bruno, Milton, Dryden, Wolfe, Hunter and Wordsworth, as a 'man of great Genius and original Mind' (Collected Letters 4:938). Although he no longer appears in such distinguished company, during the 1790s, Brown's adherents included Immanuel Kant, J. G. Fichte and Friedrich von Schelling and, among Coleridge's immediate circle Erasmus Darwin, James Mackintosh, John Thelwall and Beddoes. This neglected strand of radical British thought from the 1780s and '90s was to play a great part in Coleridge's espousal of German Idealist philosophy." Stimulation does not only come from the outside, but also triggers from within the powers of internal excitability.
The emergence of Fichte's philosophy in 1794 provided another context for the reception of Brown's ideas. 'Fichte's Wissenschaftlehre is the theory of excitability', wrote Novalis, excitedly (Werke 3: 383). Fichte's account of the relationship between the 'I' and the 'not-I' found its biological correlate in the relationship between the organism and its environment.
:Schelling too came under Brown's influence, and saw in Brunonian medicine the domain in contemporary science which was most suitable to the development of Naturphilosophie.
One of the most prominent physicians at the time, Christoph W. Hufeland (1762–1836) was initially also opposed as it seemed to convert the basis of traditional medicine, which he favoured, but later worked to show how Brunonianism and the excitability theory were compatible and even allowed proponents of Brunonianism to publish after 1816 in his influential Journal, himself contributing articles in 1819, 1822, and 1829, now comparing Brown with Galen.
Influence on Western medicine
Current science-based Western medical practice does not accept nineteenth century notions of "excitability".
Although the direct influence of the Brunonian system seemed to end about the mid-1800s its influence, in the form of "the idea of an active, self-reproducing and self-defending power mediating the organism's general reaction has, since then, never ceased to resonate in German medical thinking. This can be seen in Rudolf Virchow, especially when he was trying to formulate the general principles of cellular pathology."