Broussais succeeded in circumventing the idea of essential diseases only at an extra ordinarily high price; he had had to re arm the old, much criticized (and justly criticized by pathological anatomy) notion of sympathy; he had had to return to the Hallerian concept of irritation; he had fallen back on a pathological monism reminiscent of' Brown, and brought hack into play, in the logic of his system, the old practice of bleeding.