EXTRACT XLIX. 



THE CELL UNIT AS THE CENTRAL TEXTURAL ELEMENT 

 IN ORGANIC PATHOGENESIS. 



IN assigning a structural limit to the commencing process 

 of local organic pathogenesis, and tracing disease to its 

 absolute beginning as a local entity, it would seem to 

 accord with truth were we to assume the individual cell, 

 or group of cells, as the locale in which its first morbid 

 element or elements appeared, and from which the patho- 

 genetic process spread from cell to cells, from texture to 

 textures, and from organ to organs. 



Thus the cell, wherever situated, is liable to invasion 

 by chemical, physical, and bacterial influences, and so 

 becomes the vehicle of conveying that influence or these 

 influences to the cell or cells with which it is related 

 through its attached and inter-communicating processes, 

 or by structural or histological continuity, and which, 

 being the lines of least resistance, constitute the easiest 

 and direct means of spread of the disease, that spread 

 being determined by and effected through, in the first 

 place, the normal or physiological media. The cell may 

 thus be reduced to an inert or pathogenic condition by 

 the chemical or physical action on its contained proto- 

 plasm, of solidifying or liquefying substance or force, 

 or become the nidus in which and from which dead matter 

 is exuded or bacterial organisms are incubated and spread, 

 should the hygienic agencies of the vis medicatrix nature 

 be unable to cope with the circumstances so created. 



While claiming the cell as the foundation pathogenic 

 organic unit, it must be conceded that the lymph or fluid 



