Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/59

 on the part of the operator, so in Anatomy, is the examination of dead bodies, for the purpose of determining morbid lesions, an exercise of skill, surpassing what any mere surgical operation can call forth.

The history of physic abounds in evidences of inferences respecting morbid actions being hastily deduced from the appearances presented by dissection. This fruitful source of error should be sedulously guarded against by all who aim at any precision in reporting the results of necroscopic inspection.

To one more point only in relation to this subject, shall I here call attention. In examining the brain, the practice of slicing should be for ever abandoned. As this rude and in artificial mode is utterly incapable of displaying the natural structure of the organ, so is it unfitted for demonstrating those lesions which disease induces. Considerable disease may exist, and yet wholly escape detection under the mode of examination generally practised. Whoever has seen Dr. Spurzheim demonstrate a diseased brain, must be sensible of the vast superiority of the mode which he pursues. The examination being, in the first instance, thus conducted, the substance of the cerebral mass may then be sliced, in order to ascertain the changes which its internal structure may have undergone.

The remaining subject of this Essay may now be arranged under two heads, namely, the investigation of disease, and that of the operation of remedies.

The term disease applies to any deviation from a healthy state. It must have direct reference, therefore, to a state of health, and, accordingly, physiology must be the basis on which all pathology must be