Editing Georg Ernst Stahl (section)

==Medicine==
Stahl's focus was on the distinction between the living and nonliving. Although he did not support the views of iatro-mechanists, he believed that all non-living creatures are mechanical and so are living things to a certain degree.<ref name="source 1"/> His views were that nonliving things are stable throughout time and did not rapidly change. On the other hand, living things are subject to change and have a tendency to decompose, which led Stahl to work with fermentation.

Stahl professed an [[animism|animistic]] system, in opposition to the [[materialism]] of [[Hermann Boerhaave]] and Friedrich Hoffmann.<ref>* Francesco Paolo de Ceglia: ''Hoffmann and Stahl. Documents and Reflections on the Dispute.'' in ''History of Universities'' 22/1 (2007): 98–140.</ref> His main argument on living things was that there is an agent responsible for delaying this decomposition of living things and that agent is the ''anima'' or soul of the living organism. The ''anima'' controls all of the physical processes that happen in the body. It not only just controls the mechanical aspects of it but the direction and goals of them too.<ref name="source 2"/> How the anima controls these processes is through motion. He believed that the three important motions of the body are the [[circulation of blood]], [[excretion]] and [[secretion]].

These beliefs were reflected in his views on medicine. He thought that medicine should deal with the body as a whole and its ''anima'', rather than the specific parts of a body. Having knowledge on the specific mechanical parts of the body is not very useful.<ref name="source 2"/> His views had been criticized by [[Gottfried Leibniz]], with whom he exchanged letters, later published in a book titled ''Negotium otiosum seu σκιαμαχία'' (1720).<ref>Smets, Alexis. [http://www.euchems.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/binaries/34_Smets_tcm23-139379.pdf ''The Controversy Between Leibniz and Stahl on the Theory of Chemistry''] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120425064355/http://www.euchems.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/binaries/34_Smets_tcm23-139379.pdf |date=2012-04-25 }}, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on History of Chemistry</ref><ref>''The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy'' (2016), transl. and edited by F. Duchesneau and J.H. Smith, Yale UP (536pp.)</ref> Also, during the first part of the 18th century, Stahl's ideas on the non-physical part of the body were disregarded while his mechanistic ideas on the body were accepted in the works of Boerhaave and Hoffmann.<ref name="source 4">Vartanian, Aram (2006) "Stahl, Georg Ernst (1660–1734)", ''Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', editor Donald M. Borchert. 2nd ed. Vol. 9. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. 202–203. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 26 May 2013.</ref>

===Tonic motion===
As a physician, Stahl worked with patients and focused on the soul, or ''anima'', as well as blood circulation and tonic motion. ''Anima'' was a vital force that when working properly would allow the subject to be healthy; however, when malfunction of the ''anima'' occurred, so did illness. Tonic motion, to Stahl, involved the contracting and relaxing movements of the body tissue in order to serve the three main purposes. Tonic motion helped explain how animals produce [[heat]] and how [[fever]]s were caused. In Stahl's 1692 dissertation, ''De motu tonico vitali,'' Stahl explains his theory of tonic motion and how it is connected to blood flow within a subject, without citing [[William Harvey]]'s blood flow and circulation theories, which lacked an explanation of irregular blood flow. Also within the dissertation, 'practitioners' are mentioned as users of his theory of tonic motion.

Stahl's theory of ''tonic motion'' was about the [[muscle tone]] of the [[circulatory system]]. During his work at Halle, Stahl oversaw patients experiencing [[headache]]s and [[nosebleed]]s. Tonic motion explained these phenomena as blood needed a natural or artificial path to flow when a part of the body is obstructed, injured, or swollen. Stahl also experimented with [[menstruation]], finding that [[bloodletting]] in an upper portion of the body would relieve bleeding during the period. During the next period, the wound would experience pain and swelling, which would only be relieved by an opening in the foot. He also followed this procedure as a treatment for [[amenorrhoea]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Chang|first1=K|title=Motus Tonicus: Georg Ernst Stahl's Formulation of Tonic Motion and Early Modern Medical Thought|journal=[[Bulletin of the History of Medicine]]|date=2004|volume=78|issue=4|pages=767–803|doi=10.1353/bhm.2004.0161|pmid=15591695|s2cid=12488842|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/|access-date=20 April 2016}}</ref>