AUTHOE'S PEEFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION, 



In offering a new text-book to the student -youth of Germany, 

 1 feel obHged to say a few words about its contents, and the 

 main principles by which I have been guided in its composition. 

 Pathological Anatomy is one of the youngest branches of 

 Medicine. It was founded by Morgagm in his great work : 

 De sedihus et caussis morhorum 'per anatomen indagatis (Veiiet. 

 1761). It was elaborated by its founder and his immediate 

 successors [represented in Germany by Johann. Fr. Mechel 

 {Handhuch der Patliolog. Anatamie^ Halle, 1804-5), Otto, and 

 others], in entire accordance with the methods of normal 

 descriptive anatomy. During the first thirty years of the 

 present century, it came to comprise a summary of the general 

 alterations to which the various organs of the body are liable 

 in disease ; alterations in form, size, number, consistency, 

 continuity, position, relations, colour, and contents. Micro- 

 scopical investigation, which supplemented the anatomy of 

 Vesalius by normal histology, had necessarily to confer a like 

 benefit on pathological anatomy. RoJdtanshi and Virchow have 

 rendered undying services to our science as the founders of 

 pathological histology. It soon appeared, however, that j^atho- 

 logical histology was destined to stand in a relation to morbid 

 anatomy, very different from that of normal histolog}- in re- 

 ference to normal anatomy. Pathological histology shows us 

 how the coarser alterations in the size, consistency, colour, &c., 

 of organs, are based upon certain definite changes in their 

 structural elements; it explains the former by means of the 

 latter. As time wore on, it took its place, not merely as an 



