Page:Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology.djvu/34

28 such a way as to couple histology with pathology; and for this reason, that I thought I must take it for granted that many busily occupied physicians were not quite familiar with the most recent histological changes, and did not enjoy sufficiently frequent opportunities of examining microscopical objects for themselves. Inasmuch as, however, it is upon such examinations that the most important conclusions are grounded which we now draw, you will pardon me if, disregarding those among you who have a perfect acquaintance with the subject, I behave just as if you all were not completely familiar with the requisite preliminary knowledge.

The present reform in medicine, of which you have all been witnesses, essentially had its rise in new anatomical observations, and the exposition also, which I have to make to you, will therefore principally be based upon anatomical demonstrations. But for me it would not be sufficient to take, as has been the custom during the last ten years, pathological anatomy alone as the groundwork of my views; we must add thereto those facts of general anatomy also, to which the actual state of medical science is due. The history of medicine teaches us, if we will only take a somewhat comprehensive survey of it, that at all times permanent advances have been marked by anatomical innovations, and that every more important epoch has been directly ushered in by a series of important discoveries concerning the structure of the body. So it was in those old times, when the observations of the Alexandrian school, based for the first time upon the anatomy of man, prepared the way for the system of Galen; so it was, too, in the Middle Ages, when Vesalius laid the foundations of anatomy, and therewith began the real reformation of medicine ; so, lastly, was it at the commencement of this century, when Bichat developed the principles of general anatomy. What Schwann