472 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



be allowed that these depend upon certain causes ; but these 

 causes are by no means evident, and physicians are therefore 

 by no means agreed with regard to them. I cannot therefore 

 think, that Boerhaave and Gaubius have been happy in their 

 manner of defining a disease. Gaubius ( 34.) says, c status 

 ille corporis humani viventis quo Jit, ut actiones hominis pro- 

 priae non possint apposite ad leges sanitatis exerceri, morbus 

 dicitur.' In like manner, Boerhaave (Instit. 696.) says, 

 * status corporis viventis tollens facultatem exercendae actionis 

 cujuscunque, vocatur morbus.' In both these definitions the 

 sense is precisely the same ; in the one it is ' status quo fit,' 

 in the other ' status tollens. 1 But we learn nothing by taking 

 the cause into the definition : you will observe also, that these 

 definitions embarrass both Boerhaave and Gaubius in distin- 

 guishing between the disease itself and its proper cause. 



In order to explain this a little, I must remark, that the doc- 

 trine of disease has formerly been sometimes named Pathology, 

 and sometimes more accurately Nosology. The terms were 

 considered as of the same import till of late, when they have 

 been applied to different meanings and differently limited. 

 When we speak of the pathology of a disease, we consider the 

 disease in its causes and effects ; whereas, when we speak of a 

 disease in nosology., we abstract from its cause, and consider it 

 only as evident from certain external appearances ; and we then 

 distinguish diseases only by their differences in these external 

 appearances. But if this is allowed to be a proper foundation 

 for the study of the Practice of Physic, we must give a suita- 

 ble definition of disease, we must define it as consisting of a cer- 

 tain concourse of phenomena, and without any reference what- 

 ever to the cause. We must therefore desert the definition of 

 Gaubius ; the language of which we can however easily con- 

 vert into a proper definition by reading ' in quo? instead of the 

 words ' quo fit? " 



III. The prevention of diseases depends upon the knowledge 

 of their remote causes ; which is partly delivered in the general 

 Pathology, and partly to be delivered in this treatise. 



" We observe, that almost every event may be considered as 

 a part of a chain or series of causes which have in that series 

 produced one another, and which, therefore, have produced the 



