CONSERVATIVE DESIGN OF ORGANIC DISEASE. 



175 



sent for and never needed any more than he would be in a case of un- 

 disturbed physiological evolution. Both are more or less precarious 

 conditions, liable to disturbance and complication ; but, while t^wcom- 

 plicated and imdisturbed, they are both equally conservative, equally 

 devoid of symj^toms, and seldom come under the surveillance of the 

 practitioner. Thus the supposed " insidious stealth " and " fatal sub- 

 tlety" of organic disease is, in reality, the normal latency of typical 

 pathological evolution. 



It is almost unnecessary to add that latent changes are of necessity 

 slow ; hence the two qualities of chronicity and latency go hand-in- 

 hand, and both are wanting in supervening acute inflammatory com- 

 plications. 



The third quality which we have said belongs to organs developed 

 (or developing) jihysiologically is, conformity of structure to a fixed 

 typical standard. 



It may, perhaps, be less easy to point out instances of conformity 

 to a fixed type of sti'ucture in pathological formations, for the reason, 

 among others, that pathological evolutionary processes are more often 

 interrupted and made to deviate from their intended type than those 

 which are strictly physiological. Organisms follow the course of physi- 

 ological evolution easily and happily; jjathological evolution is some- 

 thing superadded, and, while conservative, is still the result of unnat- 

 ural external surroundings, and is therefore less easy and auspicious. 

 Furthermore, we may be less familiar with the finished standard of 

 structure which a typical pathological growth is aiming to reach, 

 than we are with one that is physiological, because the former are 

 more rare than the latter, and hence less frequently observed and 

 studied; physiology occurs in every organism; pathology only in 

 some. Physiological organisms may be observed in great numbers 

 together; pathological ones are exceptional and isolated. The typi- 

 cal standard of physiological develoj)ment is known, because its 

 existence has been believed in and consequently searched for ; the 

 standard type of pathological new formations is not so exactly 

 known, because its existence has not been so universally acknowl- 

 edged, and hence not so diligently sought after. 



Again, organisms undergoing pathological evolution frequently die 

 from the direct efiect or remote results of acute inflammation, and 

 here the designed type of structure is obscured by the inflammatory 

 process, so that what it would have been in the absence of inflam- 

 mation cannot always be made out. True, as we have before seen, 

 organisms undergoing physiological evolution die in the same way, 

 and therefore present the same obscurity. In the latter case, however, 

 we observe that, while the designed type of development is obscured 

 in the inflamed parts, the remainder of the organs have pursued 

 their physiological development unimpaired. In pathological evolu- 

 tion this is not the case ; that is to say, the organs remaining not in- 



