PROTOPLASM. 361 



The points concerning the combinations and the crystallizations in the 

 Californian localities, and in those also of Nevada, I can vouch for 

 personally. The facts are as set forth. I have mentioned nothing 

 which I have not myself seen. The questions which are left without 

 answer are certainly worth investigation. 







PEOTOPLASM. 



By FRANCES EMILY WHITE, M. D.* 



AT the recent International Medical Congress, held in London, 

 upon which the attention and enthusiastic interest of the whole 

 medical world were for the time being centered, Professor Huxley, 

 in an address made to that assembly, used the term " medicine " to in- 

 clude " the great body of theoretical and practical knowledge which 

 has been accumulated by the labors of some eighty generations " 

 that is, during the entire period since the dawn of scientific thought 

 in Europe. In justification of this broad application of the term, he 

 says, "It is so difficult to think of medicine otherwise than as some- 

 thing which is necessarily connected with curative treatment, that we 

 are apt to forget that there must be and is such a thing as a pure 

 science of medicine a pathology which has no more necessary sub- 

 servience to practical ends than has zoology or botany." In other 

 words, there is a science of disease and au art of healing, both of 

 which are included in the term " medicine," and, as all art is applied 

 science, it is easy to see where the study of the " healing art " should 

 begin. 



Pathology is abnormal physiology, or, more broadly, biology, the 

 science of living matter; living matter being recognized by its innate 

 tendency to undergo certain changes of form and to manifest certain 

 physiological phenomena which are universally recognized as consti- 

 tuting organization and life. When these changes of structure or of 

 function become injurious to the organism, or cease to promote its 

 general well-being, they are pathological, but the line of separation is 

 not a distinct one; it is impossible to say with exactness where physi- 

 ology ends and pathology begins. 



It is evident, then, that the science of disease is a branch of the 

 general science of life; and the distinguished lecturer, in making so 

 wide an application of the term "medicine," no doubt intended to 

 assert that the science of biology rests upon the broad foundation of 

 the general physical sciences. The study of medicine, then, consists 

 primarily in the study of biology, including those abnormalities of 



* Address delivered &t the opening of the Thirty - second Annual Session of the 

 Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. 



