SPECIAL PATHOLOGY. 

 General Considerations. 



WE have now completed the study of those fundamental processes 

 and structural alterations which are embraced in general pathology. 

 These have been considered without reference to special regions or organs 

 of the body. We now enter upon the study of these pathological proc- 

 esses and their associated lesions as they are modified by the special con- 

 ditions and characteristic structure of one and another of the tissues or 

 organs or regions of the body. It is clear that both the disease processes 

 and the structural alterations with which these are associated may be 

 modified by the functional and structural peculiarities of the affected 

 organ. Thus while degeneration, regeneration, inflammation, etc., may 

 be fundamentally similar, for example, in liver, kidney, and nerve, they 

 may present sufficient variation in one or another of these parts to re- 

 quire a separate consideration and even a special nomenclature. We 

 shall have occasion to call attention now and then to those functional 

 and structural characteristics of the organs which often throw much light 

 upon their mode of response to the various excitants of disease. 



It is well, on the other hand, to remember that there are in all the 

 organs and in most parts of the body certain elementary structures, such 

 as connective tissue, blood- and lymph-vessels, and nerves, whose lesions 

 are quite similar wherever they may be. So that many forms of lesion 

 involving these structures, while of varying significance to the organism, 

 differ in the various parts of the body chiefly in distribution or topo- 

 graphy. 



