THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 91 



former. In other words, there are diseases of humors, dis- 

 eases of tissues, and diseases of anatomical elements ; but 

 this diversity vanishes when we ascend to the common 

 cause of all morbid phenomena, when we descry the efficient 

 and inmost source of the disturbances, that is, the quanti- 

 tative or qualitative modification of the immediate prin- 

 ciples. Thus we come back to our starting-point, and find 

 at the end of our study the proofs of the interest con- 

 nected with the subject of its beginning. In fact, real and 

 positive experimental medicine sets out from normal im- 

 mediate principles, and rises by successive degrees from 

 the knowledge of these to the understanding of anatomi- 

 cal elements, tissues, humors, organs, systems. It begins 

 with those immediate principles that are toxic, disease- 

 producing, and medicinal ; and it discovers the law of vari- 

 ous pathogenic irregularities, as it does that of healing 

 effects. All the animal organs and all the liquids of the 

 system resolving themselves into immediate principles ; all 

 the metamorphoses of health and disease reducing them- 

 selves to transformations of immediate principles ; all the 

 effects of poisoning or of healing ending in the action of 

 foreign principles upon normal principles ; in a word, the 

 most complex acts of life, whether regular or disordered, 

 being explained, in the last analysis, by immediate prin- 

 ciples we may form an idea of the great importance of 

 these. The instant that medical researches are ruled and 

 guided by that necessity of referring facts to such a start- 

 ing-point, the instant that experiments and observations 

 converge toward that light, every thing becomes orderly, 

 every thing finds its place, every thing gains significance. 

 Uncertainties vanish. Science advances with regularity, 

 and practice with assurance. In this manner general anat- 

 omy exerts an influence of a constant and wholesome kind 

 upon the increasingly rapid progress of medicine properly 

 so called. 



