[3] Brown himself relates in the Introduction to his magnum opus, Elementa Medicinae, that his ideas came from an attack of gout, but in a period when his dietary intake was less rather than more.
Since the cause of gout was then held to be a problem of excess, he was put on a strict vegetable diet with no wine or alcohol for a year, but instead of the promised cure, he had four "exceedingly violent" episodes.
According to the Encyclopædia Perthensis, "Thus, from personal experience of the inefficacy of the former medical practice in the gout, he was led to review the whole old system of medicine."
While Brown's Elementa Medicinae had been known in Germany, it was not made available until 1794, when Adam Melchor Weikard, former physician to Catherine the Great of Russia, arranged for its publication in Latin after having had it brought to his attention by Andreas Röschlaub, a medical student (who was himself given a copy in 1793 by a friend).
However, Schelling had initially misunderstood Brown's system as mechanical, but it was Röschlaub who helped him to see its dynamic aspects and applicability within a science of nature (Naturphilosophie).
Röschlaub's main work on the Brunonian system, the Untersuchungen, setting out his and Marcus' experience, came out in 1798 and went out of print quickly, leading to a second edition in 1800.
As William Osler, the renowned Canadian-born physician wrote at the turn of the 20th century: One of the most prominent physicians at the time, Christoph W. Hufeland (1762–1836) was initially also opposed as it seemed to convert the basis of traditional medicine, which he favoured, but later worked to show how Brunonianism and the excitability theory were compatible and even allowed proponents of Brunonianism to publish after 1816 in his influential Journal, himself contributing articles in 1819, 1822, and 1829, now comparing Brown with Galen.
However, this renewal was cut short by the assassination on 23 March 1819 of August von Kotzebue, a major literary and conservative political figure, by a radical student.
The result was the shutting down by Metternich of all liberal journals, schools and student unions: "for medicine, this meant a general return to traditionalism and eclecticism.
Carl Wunderlich, the founder of thermometry in Germany, saw Brown and Röschlaub as the genesis of the new "physiological medicine" school of which he was a proponent.
In 1846, a German doctor and historian, Bernard Hirschel, published a very favourable study of Brunonianism and listed all the relevant literature, "which remains the best compilation on this subject"[5] Historiography misrepresented, then denounced, and finally totally ignored Röschlaub.