Page:Cellular pathology as based upon physiological and pathological histology.djvu/50

44 LECTURE I. and have therefore never become very widely diffused. According to my notions, the basis of both doctrines is an incomplete one ; I do not say a false one, because it is really only false in its exclusiveness; it must be reduced within certain limits, and we must remember that, besides vessels and blood, besides nerves and nervous centres, other things exist, which are not a mere theatre (Substrat) for the action of the nerves and blood, upon which these play their pranks.

Now, if it be demanded of medical men that they give their earnest consideration to these things also; if, on the other hand, it be required that, even among those who maintain the humoral and neuro-pathological doctrines, attention at last be paid to the fact, that the blood is composed of many single, independent parts, and that the nervous system is made up of many active individual constituents — this is, indeed, a requirement which at the first glance certainly offers several difficulties. But if you will call to mind that for years, not only in lectures, but also at the bedside, the activity of the capillaries was talked about — an activity which no one has ever seen, and which has only been assumed to exist in compliance with certain theories — you will not find it unreasonable, that things which are really .to be seen, nay are, not unfrequently, after practice, accessible even to the unaided eye, should likewise be admitted into the sphere of medical knowledge and thought. Nerves have not only been talked about where they had never been demonstrated ; their existence has been simply assumed, even in parts in which, after the most careful investigations, no trace of them could be discovered, and activity has been attributed to them in parts where they absolutely do not penetrate. It is therefore certainly not unreasonable to demand, that the greater part of the body be no longer entirely ignored ; and if no longer