XXXIX 

 THE OPTIMISM OF PATHOLOGY 



ONLY the foolish or the ignorant can speak 

 light-heartedly of disease with its malignant 

 subtlety and spreading trail of misery. How often 

 the microbe blots out the sun; how often we are 

 staggered by the corruptio optinii pcssima seen in 

 the dissolution of a structure that stood for a 

 generation like a tower four-square to the winds; 

 how often, in spite of the triumphs of modern 

 medicine, the hydra-headed irrepressibility of disease 

 grips us like a nightmare ! Health is a magnificent 

 quality, but it is ever cheek by jowl with disease; 

 and thus arises the sinister view, of which William 

 James spoke, that " beauty and hideousness, love 

 and cruelty, life and death keep house together 

 in indissoluble partnership." But without talking 

 nonsense about the whiteness of blackness, or the 

 goodness of evil, it is perhaps possible to bring 

 forward some useful considerations in regard to the 

 optimism of pathology. In the first place, there 

 is the important fact that apart from senescence 

 and parasites large and small, there is almost no 

 disease in wild Nature. Should a pathological 

 variation arise, it is eliminated before it takes grip. 

 Constitutional disease is the occurrence of a meta- 



