Disease is an abnormal motion of the blood, either general or local.

Like the English school generally, he is far more exclusively mechanical than are the Italians, and will hear nothing of ferments or acids, even in digestion.

This, he declares, is a purely mechanical process due to heat and pressure, the wonderful effects of which may be seen in Papin's recently invented 'digester.' That the stomach is fully able to comminute the food may be proved by the following calculation.

Borelli estimates the power of the flexors of the thumb at 3720 pounds, their average weight being 122 grains.

Now, the average weight of the stomach is eight ounces, therefore it can develop a force of 117,088 pounds, and this may be further assisted by the diaphragm and abdominal muscles the power of which, estimated in the same way, equals 461,219 pounds! Well may Pitcairne add that this force is not inferior to that of any millstone."(36) Paracelsus gave an extraordinary stimulus to the study of chemistry and more than anyone else he put the old alchemy on modern lines.