Page:Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology.djvu/12

vi difficult to the majority of those who are engaged in practice, to obtain in the subjects treated on in these lectures that amount of personal experience which alone can guarantee a certain degree of accuracy of judgment. Day by day do those who are obliged to consume their best energies in the frequently so toilsome and so exhausting routine of practice find it becoming less and less possible for them, not only to closely examine, but even to understand the more recent medical works. For even the language of medicine is gradually assuming another appearance; well-known processes to which the prevailing system had assigned a certain place and name in the circle of our thoughts, change with the dissolution of the system their position and their denomination. When a certain action is transferred from the nerves, blood, or vessels to the tissues, when a passive process is recognized to be an active one, an exudation to be a proliferation, then it becomes absolutely necessary to choose other expressions whereby these actions, processes, and products shall be designated; and in proportion as our knowledge of the more delicate modes, hi which the processes of life are carried on, becomes more perfect, just in that proportion must the new denominations also be adapted to this more delicate ground-work of our knowledge.

It would not be easy for any one to attempt to carry out the necessary reform in medical opinion with more respect for tradition than I have made it my endeavour to observe. Still my own experience has taught me that even in this there is a certain limit. Too great respect is a real fault, for it favours confusion; a well-selected expression renders at once accessible to the understanding of all, what, without it, efforts prolonged for years would be able to render intelligible at most only to a few. As examples I will cite the terms, parenchymatous inflammation, thrombosis and embolia, leukaemia and ichorrhaemia, osteoid and mucous tissue, cheesy and amyloid metamorphosis, and substitution of tissues. New names cannot be avoided, where actual additions to experimental (empirical) knowledge are being treated of.

On the other hand, I have already often been reproached with endeavouring to rehabilitate antiquated views in modern science. In respect to this I can, I think, say with a safe conscience that I am just as little inclined to restore Galen and Paracelsus to the position