244 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Virchow is by no means the only pathologist of high authority 

 who has distinctly laid down this principle. Thus, as Ballantyne 

 points out when remarking that the ancient belief, held even by 

 Simpson, that anomalies and malformations are due to disease has 

 been supplemented by modern research Mathias Duval has emphatic- 

 ally declared that it is not to be thought that the malformation of any 

 part is a result of disease of that part.* 



Even, however, if we go back to the time of Simpson, and earlier, 

 we find that Meckel who is sometimes regarded as one of the 

 founders of the study of variations clearly recognized that the 

 simplest anomalies and varieties pass gradually into monstrosities, 

 and that the same laws apply to both.f 



Indeed so did Hunter in the previous century. 'Every deviation/ 

 he wrote at the outset of his almost epoch-marking 'Account of an 

 Extraordinary Pheasant,' 'may not improperly be called monstrous,' 

 so that 'the variety of monsters will be almost infinite.' 



The tendency of scientific pathology is at once to push the fron- 

 tiers of the normal into regions popularly regarded as belonging to 

 disease, and at the same time, when actual disease comes into question, 

 to refuse to admit that any new laws are brought into operation. 

 "Between any form of disease and health," one of the founders of 

 modern pathology declared a quarter of a century ago, "there are 

 only differences of degree. No disease is anything more than an 

 exaggeration or disproportion or disharmony of normal phenomena. ' ' % 

 The notion that disease and health are distinct principles or entities 

 Bernard regarded as a sort of idea belonging to the medical lumber 



whenever ' the physiological norm hitherto subsisting is changed ' we are in the 

 presence of an anomaly and that in this sense every departure from the norm 

 is a pathological event, though it is not a disease and may not be harmful, 

 may even be advantageous. In what was perhaps his last utterance on the sub- 

 ject (Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, 1901, p. 213) he repeated that pathology as 

 well as physiology is an essential factor in the development of the human race. 

 Pathologists will, I know, agree with me that a conviction of the essential 

 unity of physiology and pathology lay at the foundation of the pathological 

 revolution which Virchow effected. 



* With this result Dr. Ballantyne who may be said to be the chief 

 British authority on pathology in its antenatal aspects in the main concurs. 

 He even goes so far as to assert ('Manual of Antenatal Pathology,' 1902, p. 35) 

 that natural birth in its effects on the child may almost be regarded as a 

 pathological process; 'it is very certain that the same amount of distortion of 

 parts, occurring at a later period of life, would be termed pathological.' 



t ' Handbuch der pathologischen Anatomie,' 1812, Vol. I., p. 9. 



% Claude Bernard, ' Lecons sur la chaleur animale ' (19th Lesson), 1875. 



