CHANGES WROUGHT IN PATHOLOGY, 



in 1837, so frankly and mercilessly criticised the. condi- 

 tion of chemistry in Austria that it seems small wonder 

 that the succeeding generation of medical men, mightily 

 influenced through the labors of such as CORVISART, 

 LAENNEC, and BRETONNEAU, dedicated themselves chiefly 

 to morphology, which promised so much. The experi- 

 ences of medicine with a chemistry which had been in the 

 main of a speculative character no doubt also contributed 

 to this end. The birth of iatro-chemistry, which through 

 PARACELSUS, HELMONT, and SYLVIUS ruled medicine in 

 the seventeenth century, met a just and fruitful opposition 

 through the morphological workers. Later BOERHAVE, 

 with whose entry the first brilliant epoch in medicine is 

 intimately connected, most emphatically emphasized the 

 great importance of chemical research in pathology, but 

 because of its insufficient development chemistry could 

 offer too little at that time to fulfil his promises. 



Not until the wonderful development of organic and 

 applied chemistry as introduced in the middle of the 

 last century, more especially by LIEBIG, did new paths 

 open up before pathology. In the meantime, however, 

 the morphological tendency in Vienna had, under the 

 tremendous influence of its illustrious exponents, obtained 

 the upper hand, a fact which helped to determine also 

 the nature of the increase in the faculty. Into the circle 

 of their influence were drawn the majority of the younger 

 men of talent and permanently kept there. For it resides 

 in the nature of morphological research that it is admirably 

 adapted for the introduction of the beginner to science, in 

 that it offers a large number of simple problems which 

 may be solved without drawing upon a larger number of 

 accessory sciences, while its results, which usually repre- 



