CHAPTER XIII. 



PATHOLOG Y— continued. 



CLASSIFICATION OF DISEASES. 



A correct classification of diseases, at once simple and suggestive, 

 is a subject of profound importance, essential to the existence of 

 veterinary science, and necessary for its teaching ; and were the 

 veterinarians of Europe to assemble in a great congress, and 

 there agree upon a system by which diseases might be named, 

 defined, enumerated, and classified, they would indeed attain a 

 great object. At the present time, however, the science of 

 nosology is very unsatisfactory as applied to the diseases of the 

 domesticated animals, and incomplete even in the science of 

 human medicine. 



In a work of this kind it is necessary that I shoidd refer to 

 the efforts of physicians to arrive at a satisfactory system of 

 nosology, and by reading books on medicine it will be found 

 that diseases have been classified in different ways. In the 

 system of Sauvages diseases were divided into ten classes — vitia, 

 febres,2M(',gmasioe, spasmi, anhclationcs, debilitates, dolor cs, vesanice, 

 Jluxus, cachexia. Linnaeus, Vogel, and Sagar's classifications were 

 also of this kind, and Cullen's method was an unnatural simpli- 

 fication of it, by which all diseases were arranged in four 

 classes — pyrexice, neuroses, cachexia, and locales. This system of 

 classification is based upon the symptoms, and regards them as 

 the essences of diseases ; hence it is exceedingly unsatisfactory, 

 and has been abandoned. 



Believing that nosology should be founded upon correct 

 pathology, Pinel divided diseases into five kinds, nvimoiy , fevers, 

 infiammatioyis, hcemorrhages, neuroses, and organic affections. 

 This classification is necessarily imperfect from the state of 

 pathological science in Pinel's days, but it approaches very 



