RELATION TO OTHER SCIENCES 133 



Points of contact with philosophy are always presented by these 

 general biologic problems, and we need only name Lotze, 1 the 

 physician and philosopher, and his work on General Pathology as a 

 Mechanical Science, to find the close relationship between philosophy 

 and pathology personified in modern times. Metaphysic consider- 

 ation of empiric assertions is necessary, as Kant has taught, to draw 

 general conclusions and formulate general rules and laws from the 

 observation of nature. Biology, and not least, pathology, lead 

 everywhere to the limits of our knowledge of nature, where fixed 

 knowledge finds its end, where we must, with Du Bois Reymond, 2 

 acknowledge our ignorance of what lies beyond, but where philosophic 

 contemplations point a higher and more general way out of our 

 difficulty. These limits to our knowledge are not lasting, however, 

 for pathology. We will not remain in ignorance as long as the know- 

 ledge of healthy and diseased life progresses, and the boundaries of 

 natural science and philosophic contemplation of the problems are 

 being extended. Increasing knowledge of facts must be the basis of 

 philosophic contemplation, if this would have real value. 



There was a time in pathology when philosophic conceptions 

 outweighed all other considerations, and when it was believed that 

 all the problems of general biology and those of general pathology 

 could be solved by pure reasoning. This period of natural philosophy 

 was as unfruitful for real progress in pathology as the period of 

 dogmatism in the Middle Ages, when Aristotle and Galen were looked 

 upon as the sum of all wisdom, and pathology was nothing more 

 than philology, as all scientific work consisted principally in criticis- 

 ing and commenting upon the Greek writings. 



This changed only after we emancipated ourselves more and more 

 from the old dogmatic belief and through original investigations 

 laid a true scientific foundation for pathology. The maxim of the 

 great Morgagni, 3 " Nulla autem est alia pro certo noscendi via, nisi 

 quam plurimas et morborum et dissectionum historias, turn aliorum 

 turn proprias collectas habere et inter se comparare," as well as his 

 other, "Non numerandae sed perpendendae sunt observations, " had 

 to receive general recognition before pathology was enabled to take 

 its place among the other natural sciences. This place it had lost, 

 for in the renaissance of science in the sixteenth century pathology 

 stood in close relation to the other natural sciences; and medicine 

 was for centuries the bearer of all natural science and included all 

 other sciences within itself, so that not only did the teachers of other 

 sciences belong in many cases to the medical faculty, but zoology 



Lotze, Die allgemeine Pathologic und Therapie als mechanische Natunvissen, 

 schaft, Leipzig, 1842. 



2 Du Bois Reymond, Ueber die Grenzen des Nnturerkennens, Naturforscher-Ver- 

 Sammlung in Leipzig, 1872. 



3 De sedibus et causis morborum, per anatomen indagatis, 1761. 



