64 DADD'S VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 



Iii my discourse on inflammation, reference was made to the 

 views held by the ' neuro-pathologists.' Now, nervous pathology 

 has been in medicine the ' great scape-goat' upon which more 

 professional sins have been heaped than any other. 'Nervous 

 exhaustion/ nervous irritation, etc., are a few of the many terms 

 with which we seek to cloak our ignorance of the real nature of 

 many disorders, the intimate nature of which is beyond our ken. 

 Many accomplished practitioners still maintain that abnormal, 

 vital phenomena may be, and are likely to be, occasioned by 

 dynamic aberrations alone, and that such phenomena are cor- 

 rectly designated as functional disease. We can not concur in 

 this opinion. What is called force of every description is con- 

 nected with, if not dependent on, changes in the atoms of matter 

 Force is the hypothetic agent which underlies the phenomena of 

 material change ; and to affirm that dynamic modifications of vital 

 function may exist without alteration of material organization, is 

 to ignore the fundamental principles of philosophic physiology. 

 All diseases, therefore, in our opinion, is organic, even mental 

 and nervous diseases of every kind and form. Not a thrill of 

 sensation can occur, not a flashing thought or a passing feeling 

 can take place, without changes in the living organism ; much less 

 can diseased sensation, thought, or feeling occur without such 

 changes — changes which we are not able to detect, and which we 

 may never be able to demonstrate, but which we are, nevertheless, 

 certain of. For, whether we adopt the theory that the states and 

 things which we call heat, electricity, vitality, etc., are distinct 

 entities of what is called 'imponderable' matter, or the far more 

 probable theory that they are only phenomena belonging to 

 ordinary ponderable matter, an atom or a cell, charged with 

 electricity or heat, or in a state of chemical activity, is essentially 

 in a different condition to a cell or an atom in chemical or elec- 

 trical equilibrium with surrounding substances. Organic actions 

 caii not exist without corresponding change.^ in material con- 

 dition. The only force capable of explaining any of the phe- 

 nomena of life is the chemical one, and this only in a state of 

 constant activity and interminable change. In disease, the chemi- 

 cal composition of the cells, or general matter, is altered from the 

 standard of health, and this alteration of chemical composition is 

 the real groundwork of organic disease. Those abnormal states- 

 which depend upon an altered condition of the blood, are not \es.% 



