REVIEWS 163 



The Principles of Pathology. Vol. I., General Pathology. By J. George 

 ADAMI, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S. [Pp. xvi + 948.] (London : Henry 

 Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1909. 30^. net.) 



A CONGERIES of facts, however extensive, does not constitute a science. It is 

 indeed hardly an exaggeration to say that a fact in natural history only becomes 

 of interest when it can be correlated with other facts : it is certain that it has no 

 status in a philosophical science until a place has been found first in the co- 

 ordinated scheme of the branch of knowledge to which it belongs. All natural 

 sciences pass through the phase in which the collection of data is the chief con- 

 sideration : from time to time certain groups of these data are extracted by a 

 master-mind, or extract themselves, and their interrelation becomes demonstrated. 

 In this way the data are made subservient to general principles, and it is on the 

 basis of these general principles that future work is planned. Pathology has long 

 laboured under the disadvantage of being, at first in fact and afterwards in theory, 

 a chaotic mass of data. At one time physiology was a mere appendage of 

 anatomy, and the only data as regards function were the facts of structure. 

 Pathology has not yet altogether emerged from the parallel stage of development. 

 That morbid anatomy, morbid histology, and systematic parasitology constitute the 

 bricks and straw of pathology is axiomatic : the realisation that bricks and straw 

 are in themselves singularly unlovely and useless has long been delayed. There 

 are about a dozen text-books of pathology originally written in English which may 

 be called well known ; with the notable exception of the General or Experimental 

 Pathology of Lazarus-Barlow hardly one of these is more than a dictionary of 

 facts. Hence it has come about that the rare and the curious, of which we know 

 nothing, is often held to be of more moment than the commonplace, of which we 

 may know much ; the data of pathology are treated, in short, on the pre-Darwinian 

 method which prevailed — and alas ! still prevails — among collectors of beetles and 

 the like. If it is one's business in life to introduce the student to this arid literary 

 desert, one cannot but feel rather ashamed of our text-books. His study of 

 physiology has taught him that his business is to find out what things are : he 

 finds that in pathology he is apt to be put off with a statement of what things are 

 called. Now this lamentable state of affairs has not been due to any failure in the 

 accumulation of data. The data have been with us long enough : it is meditative 

 co-ordination that has been lacking. This is no place to inquire at length into the 

 reasons for this. There can, however, be little doubt that the abundant applica- 

 tions of the art of pathology to the daily procedures of practical medicine have to 

 some extent delayed the advance of the true academic science, in the first place by 

 occupying the time of the available staff, in the second place by obscuring the 

 relative importance of the phenomena, and in the third place by introducing a 

 type of mind which approaches pathology through medicine instead of the 

 reverse. 



Some such notions as these have evidently been the principles guiding Prof. 

 Adami in writing the remarkable book which is before us. He tells us that " what 

 is needed in a text-book of pathology is not the mere record and description of 

 phenomena, but the attempt to analyse these phenomena in an orderly manner." 

 The attempt is a brave one and a successful one, and the book forms a landmark 

 in the history of English pathology. There is no doubt that it will go far in helping 

 to bring about the realisation of the author's ideal which he has expressed else- 

 where : " Our pathology is not to be a mere catalogue raisonne of names of morbid 

 states, with precise descriptions of what those names indicate, but is to be a science 



