Despite the exciting advances that took place in science and medicine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was only in the nineteenth century that medicine itself became scientific. This was largely the result of the integration of the natural sciences into medical theory. During the eighteenth century the foundations of scientific medicine were first established. The ideas of the Enlightenment had inspired the search for rational systems of medicine, as well as practical means of preventing disease and improving human welfare. Social and medical reformers argued that scientific investigations of the abominable conditions of cities, navies, armies, and prisons, as well as the human body and pathological signs and symptoms, could improve the health and prosperity of society as a whole. Advocates of public health and preventive medicine, like Johann Peter Frank (1745-1821), sometimes urged states to adopt authoritarian methods to accomplish their...