VI PREFACE AND SUMMARY OF CONTEXTS. 



regard the majority of hypothetical conceptions now interspersed 

 throughout the many subdivisions of medical science as tem- 

 porary, though artificial, factors. Our knowledge of a given 

 disease, for example, might, as viewed from our standpoint, be 

 compared to a chain in which the majority of links are of gold 

 and the rest of lead, pending the acquisition of sufficient gold 

 to replace the lead. Thus construed, Medicine seems to us to 

 acquire its proper position among allied sciences, while the 

 many investigators who have devoted their life to its welfare 

 and progress also find their labors fitly represented in its annals. 

 Indeed, the list of these patient workers should be greatly 

 increased if the views submitted in this volume are sound, for 

 the data contained therein the very ones that have presented 

 the strongest claims to recognition were found in literature 

 of the kind that often lies dormant many years before its true 

 worth is brought to light. That thousands of such contribu- 

 tions exist we were able to ascertain: an auspicious feature of 

 our earlier work, which showed that we were not dependent 

 upon the "observations and experiments" the future alone 

 would contribute to begin the elimination of "theoretical sys- 

 tems" and replace them, if possible, with others of a more 

 durable kind. 



Our earlier investigations included a careful review of 

 prevailing doctrines concerning the nature of vital processes, 

 particularly in respect to the physiological chemistry of cellular 

 metabolism. Notwithstanding our intense desire to acquire 

 elucidative data from the existing literature of the subject, we 

 found it impossible to advance one step beyond the position 

 taken by Professor Foster in 1895 when he wrote: "We cannot 

 trace the oxygen through its sojourn in the tissues. We only 

 know that sooner or later it comes back combined in carbonic 

 acid (and other matters not now under consideration)." To 

 us, this meant a closed door precisely where we hoped to find 

 the information required to fill numerous gaps in our knowl- 

 edge of the majority of diseases. Tissue-respiration being ob- 

 viously the dominant factor of all the problems we hoped to 

 solve, we thought it advisable to leave the beaten paths and 

 seek clues among subjects which had never been associated 

 with this physiological function. 



