Page:Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology.djvu/49

CELLULAR PATHOLOGY. 43 undergoing, in consequence of certain external or internal influences, certain changes confined to their own limits, and not necessarily participated in by the cells immediately adjoining.

That which I have now laid before you will be sufficient to show you in what way I consider it necessary to trace pathological facts to their origin in known histological elements ; why, for example, I am not satisfied with talking about an action of the vessels, or an action of the nerves, but why I consider it necessary to bestow attention upon the great number of minute parts which really constitute the chief mass of the substance of the body, as well as upon the vessels and nerves. It is not enough that, as has for a long time been the case, the muscles should be singled out as being the only active elements ; within the great remainder, which is generally regarded as an inert mass, there is in addition an enormous number of active parts to be met with.

Amid the development which medicine has undergone up to the present time, we find the dispute between the humoral and solidistic schools of olden times still maintained. The humoral schools have generally had the greatest success, because they have offered the most convenient explanation, and, in fact, the most plausible interpretation of morbid processes. We may say that nearly all successful practical, and noted hospital, physicians have had more or less humoro-pathological tendencies; aye, and these have become so popular, that it is extremely difficult for any physician to free himself from them. The solido-pathological views have been rather the hobby of speculative inquirers, and have had their origin not so much in the immediate requirements of pathology, as in physiological and philosophical, and even in religious speculations. They have been forced to do violence to facts, both in anatomy and physiology,