Page:The Harveian oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians June 26, 1889 (IA b22361285).pdf/34

 diabetes, in jaundice, and in many forms of urinary disease, and we shall doubtless use it more and more as pathology advances. In considering the value of chemistry as applied to the analysis of the fluids, we must not forget its importance when used as an interpreter of the true nature of the results of disease as seen in the solids. I would submit that the microscope has been too exclusively relied upon in prosecuting this interesting inquiry; that form and arrangement have too much engrossed the attention of pathologists, while the chemical characters of the materials under examination have not received due consideration.

The microscope, except it be used to assist us in detecting the minute dissections (if I may be allowed the term) practised by the application of chemical re-agents, loses half its value; and whenever physicians become chemists as well as micrographers, we shall very probably see a host o