The Physiology of Political Economy: Vitalism and Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations"

William Cullen and a missing mind-body link in the early history of placebos

“…Along with other thinkers of the period, including the economist Adam Smith and the philosopher David Hume, 5 Cullen developed a theory of 'sympathy' which informed his ideas about clinical medicine. For Cullen, sympathy was a mind-body function, a kind of 'vital force' that animated the human body, coordinated function, and transmitted sensation to target organs.…”

“…Thousands of patients consulted Cullen by post and in person at the Edinburgh clinic, including such luminaries as his friend Adam Smith, the famous economist. 5 In his historical account of Scottish medicine, Risse 6 noted that Cullen 'employed regular drugs as placebos, although at lower doses'. We have examined the manuscripts of Cullen's clinical lectures, 7 which are held in the Historical Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.…”

Pain, sympathy and the medical encounter between the mid eighteenth and the mid twentieth centuries

“…As historians Chris Lawrence and Catherine Packham have clearly demonstrated, these distinguished physicians were not only supported by landed elites but were also friends and colleagues of leading philosophers of the time, particularly in Edinburgh. 30 Many were members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society, which had emerged from the Edinburgh Medical School and regularly debated issues of medicine alongside those of philosophy. Seguin Henry Jackson even admitted that, when he developed his theory of the sympathetic nervous system, he was drawing on ‘the old language’ of moral sympathy as used by philosophers: admittedly, he noted, there might be some objections to this usage but he decided to continue to deploy ‘the old language, that I may not be misunderstood’.…”