CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF OBGANIC DISEASE. 171 



any unpleasant effect : these last were organically sound before ex- 

 posure, and the same after it. In external, visible parts, that are the 

 seat of injury or disease, or that have been wounded by the surgeon's 

 knife, and which are undergoing the process of tissue-repair, we see 

 redness and congestion follow exposure to cold, and often enough 

 hear the patient not only complain of pain, but date its commencement 

 from known exposure, and express his belief reached as if by instinct 

 that " cold had settled on the part." 



Again, as young animals instinctively dread cold, and as Nature 

 provides them means for warmth, so in individuals undergoing evolu- 

 tion of a pathological kind, we observe a like instinctive dread of ex- 

 posure, and a liability to be easily " chilled," while means of protec- 

 tion are also instinctively resorted to. The extra quilt at night ; the 

 heavy wrapper during the day ; the thick woolen under-garments ; the 

 flannel " chest-protector ; " the late fires in spring, and early ones in 

 autumn, so necessary for the comfort of the invalid what are they 

 but imitations of the means supplied by Nature for tlie preser- 

 vation of warmth in young animals undergoing physiological de- 

 velopment ? 



We have further proof that organs undergoing pathological evolu- 

 tion are liable to be disturbed by cold in the manner referred to, and 

 also that the existence of the evolutionary process is itself one of the 

 conditions without which (in the absence of others) inflammation, after 

 exposure, would not take place, in the fact that attacks of inflamma- 

 tion occur repeatedly in the same organ. Thus, to take a familiar il- 

 lustration, it has been long ago observed that some people are liable 

 to repeated attacks of inflammation of the lungs (pneumonia). Andral 

 records a case of a patient who had fifteen attacks in eleven years ; 

 Chomel has seen ten recurrences, J. P. Frank eleven, and Rust has re- 

 corded twenty-eight attacks, in the same individuah A patient of 

 Ziemssen's had four attacks in five years. It is also observed that, of 

 the two lungs, the one first afiected is most liable to suffer from subse- 

 quent attacks. In thirty-five cases of recurrence collected by Grisolle, 

 the return of the disease was noted twenty-five times in the lung first 

 affected. In the other ten, the disease changed sides {see Keynolds's 

 " System of Medicine," vol. iii,, p. 613). 



The limits of the present paper precluding a very prolonged argu- 

 ment, we leave this part of the subject, hoping that what has been 

 said is sufficient to account for the mortality of pathological processes 

 which, we have said, are designedly conservative. 



We may now further follow out the analogy between physiological 

 and pathological evolution, by observing that structures undergoing 

 pathological development {conservative organic modification), like 

 those that are being developed physiologically, manifest an intrinsic 

 tendency, when undisturbed in their progress, to pursue a fixed, typical 

 course to their naturally-designed termination. When 2^rmitted to 



