Abstract

John Gregory became professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1766, when Robert Whytt died. His medical thought is strictly connected with Whytt's physiology, with whom he shared a non-mechanical and non-materialist interpretation of animal life. Gregory dealt also with a new moral and medical problem produced by the popularization of medical care, the relationship between a patient and his physician. Following Baconian advice and moral theories of David Hume and Thomas Reid, Gregory considered human imagination not only a cause of illness, but also a treatment: the correct use of imagination is said to improve the powers of understanding and to regulate passions.