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Irish Newtonian Physicians and Their Arguments: the Case of Bryan Robinson

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Irish Newtonian Physicians and Their Arguments: the Case of Bryan Robinson chapter 6 Irish Newtonian Physicians and Their Arguments: The Case of Bryan Robinson Anna Marie Roos Introduction In 1732, the Irish physician and mathematician Bryan Robinson (1680–1754) wrote his Treatise of the Animal Oeconomy, a work on physiological iatromech- anism, a discipline that regarded the body as a machine, conforming in its func- tions to mechanical laws, and physiological phenomena to the laws of physics.1 Past scholarly analysis has portrayed Robinson’s work in the context of two in- tellectual influences: first, Leiden physician Hermann Boerhaave’s (1668–1738) emphasis on the hydraulics of bodily fluids flowing through the veins and ar- teries, as well his study of solids and their fibres whose faults caused distem- pers; and second, a “Newtonian physiology” based on the queries on ether in Newton’s Opticks.2 Indeed, it is true that Robinson “was an ardent admirer of 1 Bryan Robinson, A Treatise of the Animal Oeconomy (Dublin: George Grierson, 1732). A sec- ond edition appeared in Dublin, printed by S. Powell, for George Ewing, and William Smith in 1737 (with the date 1734 in its first part) – it is this second edition of the work which I will refer to throughout the paper. A subsequent edition was printed at London for W. Innys and R. Manby in 1738. The 1734–1737 edition includes “A continuation of a treatise of the animal oeconomy” which has a separate title page ([chi]1r) dated 1737, and “A Letter to Dr Cheyne containing An Account of the Motion of Water through Orifices and Pipes; And an Answer to Dr Morgan’s Remarks on Dr Robinson’s Treatise of the Animal Oeconomy”, printed by the same printer and dated 1735, the year it had initially been printed. 2 For Boerhaave’s influence, see Theodore Browne, “The Mechanical Philosophy and the ‘Ani- mal Oeconomy’ – A Study in the Development of English Physiology in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century,” Ph.D. diss. (Princeton University, 1968), 351–353. For the ether’s influence on Robinson, see Arnold Thackray, Atoms and Powers: An Essay on Newtonian Mat- ter Theory and the Development of Chemistry (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 135–141; J.R.R. Christie, “Ether and the Science of chemistry: 1740–1790”, in G.N. Cantor and M.J.S. Hodge (eds.), Conceptions of Ether: Studies in the history of ether theories, 1740–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 86–110, on 96–98. Christie sees Robinson pri- marily as an influence on the Scottish chemist William Cullum. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/9789004336650_007 <UN> Irish Newtonian Physicians and Their Arguments 117 Newton, and tried to account for animal motions by his principles.”3 Robinson attributed the “motion of muscles to the vibration of an ethereal fluid pervad- ing the animal body,” grounding his theory of the ether on his mentor Richard Helsham’s analysis of pneumatics.4 When Robinson was seventy, the artist Benjamin Wilson (1721–88) did an etching of the elderly physician, portraying him seated next to a table on which was placed a bust of Newton and two books: Newton’s Opticks, and Hippocrates’ Aphorisms.5 Looking at the portrait (Fig. 1), we imagine that the artist and his subject were probably engaged in lively conversation, as Rob- inson leans forward, ready to speak. The portrait also indicated the origin of Robinson’s intellectual sympathies. Not surprisingly, Robinson even organized his works much as Newton did in his Principia with Propositions and General Scholia. In his youth, Robinson was best known as a mathematician, having published a translated edition of Pierre de la Hire’s Conic Sections (1704), so organising his medical treatises in the manner of a geometrical argument (as Newton did) would have had great appeal to him.6 Robinson’s name was also prominent in the lists of subscribers to works popularizing Newtonian theory; for instance he was a subscriber to An Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophi- cal Discoveries in Four Books (1748) compiled from the notes of Colin MacLau- rin, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh.7 Despite these past analyses of Robinson’s work, there has been little study of the intellectual context and the reactions to Robinson’s ideas amongst the medical community within and without Ireland. As James Kelly has indicat- ed for the study of the history of Irish medicine, “closer inquiry is required … to establish the extent to which the Galenist humoral approach retreated (if at all) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the face of new knowledge, new medical theories and new styles of practice.”8 As this new knowledge included Newtonian medicine, this chapter will thus analyze the 3 G. Le G. Norgate, “Robinson, Bryan (1680–1754)”, rev. Jean Loudon, Oxford Dictionary of Na- tional Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. 4 Turlough O’Riordan, “Bryan Robinson”, Dictionary of Irish Biography Online. 5 Bryan Robinson, m.d. aetatis suae 70, by Benjamin Wilson, Prints and Drawings, National Library of Ireland, Dublin, ep robi-br (1) iii. 6 [Philippe de la Hire], New Elements of Conic Sections, trans. Bryan Robinson (London: Dan Midwinter, 1704). 7 Patrick Murdoch, An Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries in Four Books by Colin Maclaurin (London: printed for the Author’s children, 1748), List of Subscribers. 8 James Kelly, “Introduction”, in Ireland and Medicine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centu- ries (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 1–17, on 4. <UN>.
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