Volume 1

A text-book of pathology for the use of students and practitioners of medicine and surgery / edited by Ludvig Hektoen and David Riesman.

  • Hektoen, Ludvig, 1863-1951.
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: A text-book of pathology for the use of students and practitioners of medicine and surgery / edited by Ludvig Hektoen and David Riesman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    PATHOLOGY AND ITS SUBDIVISIONS. the structure or funetiou of an organism diifers markedly from a normal standard for the species, the reason lies either in the abnormality of the inherent activities of some or all of the cells of the organism, or in the abnormal nature of the environmental influences to which some or all of the cells are exposed, or in both. In any of these cases morbid instead of normal reactions are encountered. In the first instance environmental influ- ences, normal for healthy individuals, would call forth morbid reactions; in the second instance individuals previously healthy would become diseased through environmental influences which are incompatible with the mainten- ance of health because outside the ordinary deviations from the average; and in the third instance the two conditions would be combined. PATHOLOGY AND ITS SUBDIVISIONS. The science Avhich studies diseased or abnormal conditions is called pathology ^ {ndOo^, disease; Aoyo-, an account of). So extensive a field is included in this term that the science is conveniently divided into several departments. In the first place, it is customary to distuiguish General Pathology from Special, or Descriptive, Pathology. By the latter is under- stood the science which deals with the abnormal conditions in individual diseases; it analyzes the cause or causes of each individual disease, the mode in which the cause leads to morbid reactions on the part of the cells, the structural and functional alterations which are ascertainable, and the course and termination of the disease. It is by no means confined to a study of the postmortem lesions to be found in cases of disease ; on the contrary,'it deals especially with the phenomena observable during life. Special pathology is commonly subdivided into medical, or inter- nal pathology, and mvgical, or external, patholociy, the former dealino- with the deeper and more concealed organs, the latter with those easily accessible. But the domains of medicine and surgery are more and more overlappmg one another, so that no strict line can be drawn between the two, and the arbitrary subdivision is simply a matter of convenience. The same is true of the finer subdivisions of special pathology—dermatoloo-y ophthalmology, rhinology, laryngology, gynecology, and the like. ''^' General pathology stands in the same relation to special pathology that philosophy occupies as regards the individual sciences; it is the syntlfe- sis of the analyses which special pathology aflPords. It strives to find out tJie laws which govern disease in general, searches for the causes of disease, discovers the order of events in diseased conditions, and groups the symptoms and lesions common to whole series of special ]3atholooic processes. It has less to do with the collection of individual fiicts and observations than with their arrangement and explanation. Pathologic anatomy deals with the structural alterations or Wwm observable in diseased conditions of the organism, not only with those wliich can be made out with the naked eye {gross morbid anatomy), but also those ascertainable with the aid of the microscope (mhmtc morbid anatomy or pathologic histology). Pathologic physiology studies the deviations of the functions of the organism from the normal under pathologic conditions; in other Avords, it investigates morbid reactions. Pathologic chemistry and physics have to deal with the devia-