24 NOMENCLATURE OF DISEASE. 



satisfactorily studied and arranged, as zoologists and botanists 

 have catalogued, in classes, orders, and genera, animals and 

 plants, each class, order, and species marked off from every 

 other by the exhibition of characteristic phenomena, has not 

 sufficient attraction or usefulness to cause it to be carried out, 

 and in our day has given place to one which, if less strict and 

 methodical, is regarded as more natural. 



Our presently received and generally adopted system of de- 

 fining disease is certainly Avhat may be termed an artificial 

 one, and takes for its essential or starting-point, in the defini- 

 tion and distinction of particular diseases, the possession or 

 occurrence of the same symptoms or phenomena, either as 

 they occur individually or are linked together in successively 

 developed groups. In this way certainly some of the benefits 

 of a definition are obtained, and each disease is by a short 

 enumeration of leading features distinguished and marked off 

 from every other. 



There is, however, much difference amongst pathologists, 

 whether any attempted definition of disease ought to be draAvn 

 from a consideration of those outward signs and phenomena 

 exhibited during the course of the disease, or from the internal 

 pathological conditions upon which these phenomena are be- 

 lieved to depend. 



It is probably better, considering the changing character 

 which by experimental investigation and by clinical observa- 

 tion is liable to be conferred on what we now regard as the 

 proximate causes of disease, that the distinction and definition 

 of it be conducted upon principles as far as possible removed 

 from theory and the region of speculation. If we may not be 

 able to give such a definition of any diseased condition as to 

 include all its characteristics, and so accurately define and 

 separate it from all others, that it shall for all time remain 

 and prominently stand forth as a distinct and circumscribed 

 and isolated thing, Ave may at least be able sufficiently to de- 

 scribe its exhibitional features and phenomena, that those who 

 desire it may be able to identify it with accuracy sufficient for 

 practical work and treatment. 



In the nomenclature or naming of disease there is encoun- 

 tered not only difficulty, but also much which is amusing, if 

 not instructive. 



