AUTHOE'S DEDICATION TO THEODOR BILLROTH 



{Standing In lieu of Treface to the Second Edition). 



My dear Friend, 



I very much regret that I was away from home a 

 few weeks ago, when you paid me the visit to which I had long 

 been looking forward. I should have keenly enjoyed discuss- 

 in o- with vou the frreat events of this most memorable time, 

 and talking over the little difficulties which beset the author of 

 a hand-book of Pathological Histology, when he desires to keep 

 pace with current discovery. 



It is a hard thing to play the part of architect to a building, 

 the materials for which exist only as a heap of stones, more or 

 less roughly hewn ; but for which no general plan has been 

 laid down. One has to build in continual peril of having to 

 pnll down remorselessly to-day, what seemed ]3nt yesterday to 

 be solid and enduring. Compare the section dealing with 

 Morbid Growth in this second edition, with the same section in 

 the first ; not one stone has been left upon another. For this 

 we have to thank Billroth, Cohilteim, Thiersch j Walde^/er, 

 Strieker, Koster, and many others. And how long may we 

 expect the present edifice to last ? As you know, I am the last 

 man to complain of this. But I should have good reason for 

 complaint, were any one, in looking over this book some years 

 hence, to forget that the views laid down in it were the views 

 of the author in October, 1870. This has been done by 

 some critics of my first edition. On more than one occasion, 

 I have been pained to find myself regarded as '^ older" than I 

 really was, by a vigorous and energetic youth. I own that 



