METHODOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION. 7 



have been arrested in different stages of development and organ- 

 isation. If we adhere to this point of view, we shall no longer 

 attempt to discover the special matters of scirrhus, encephaloid, 

 &c., but shall rather look upon these objects as the means of 

 furnishing us with a clue to the physiologico-chemical processes by 

 which the plasma is developed into cells and fibres, which have 

 hitherto presented insuperable obstacles to the advance of chemical 

 enquiry. 



In adverting to the false position assumed by pathological che- 

 mistry in reference to pathological anatomy, it must not be for- 

 gotten that the pathologico-anatomical school is equally deserving of 

 censure. Whence comes it, we may ask, that those who would set 

 aside pathological anatomy, and who profess to limit their investi- 

 gations to the actual facts of medicine, should threaten us with all 

 the horrors of a transcendental humoral pathology ? The solution 

 of this question is to be found in the circumstance that, strictly 

 speaking, pathological anatomy is occupied only with the external 

 palpable alterations experienced by the tissues and juices from the 

 action of disease, and that if any of the more gradual stages of 

 transition be made apparent in the course of such processes, these 

 are mere forms or facts, and afford no insight into the modus 

 of the organic changes. In a word, pathological anatomy is a 

 purely descriptive science, a natural history of morbid actions, 

 which may lead to the establishment of a system, but not to that of 

 a general principle and to conclusive deductions. It is the geognosy 

 of the morbid organism, and must be allied to a geology of disease 

 which, however, it is incapable of establishing. It is precisely the 

 purely descriptive character of pathological chemistry that places it 

 beyond the sphere of experiment. Like geognosy, it can only 

 attain its aim the scientific recognition of objects with the co- 

 operation of physics and chemistry. If, however, pathological 

 anatomy is to be regarded as the surest foundation of medical 

 science, we must endeavour, on speculative grounds, to ally it more 

 closely with pathology, and thus render it, to a certain extent, 

 more acceptable to the medical public. We are convinced that the 

 principal object had in view by the founder of German pathological 

 anatomy, Rokitansky, in writing the first volume of his celebrated 

 work, which has been so severely criticised, was simply to indicate 

 to pathologists the points of view from which the fruits yielded by 

 the pathological anatomy he had himself established might be most 

 fully comprehended. But it has unfortunately happened that his 

 followers have frequently borrowed from physics and chemistry 



