GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 179 



Medical practitioners (and we always use that term for 

 those that practice on the lower animals as well as on man) 

 use the terms "diagnosis," "prognosis," "prophylaxis," 

 "treatment," etc., as applicable to every disease. Diag- 

 nosis is the recognition of a certain group of disturbances 

 or symptoms as characteristic ; prognosis is simply another 

 term for the outlook, the probable issue; prophylaxis is 

 the technical expression for means of prevention; while 

 treatment implies all that is to be done to help the patient. 



It can not be too well remembered that disease is not 

 an entity, something that can exist apart from an animal. 

 Disease is nothing more than altered function, a more or 

 less serious departure from the natural condition ; hence to 

 know what is the natural condition of an animal is the 

 first requisite for the understanding of disease. We must 

 always have a standard of comparison. Scientific medicine 

 is impossible without scientific pathology or knowledge of 

 altered function, and this again is dependent on a sound 

 physiology or knowledge of the normal behavior of the 

 body. Treatment is based on both, as well as a knowledge 

 of causation, for the first principle of treatment is always 

 to remove, if possible, the cause, and, if that is not to be 

 done, to neutralize it as far as we can. 



Disease always implies altered nutrition, or, to use a 

 more modern and expressive term, metabolism, or series 

 of essential changes that make up the life-work of a cell, 

 organ, or entire organism. 



It is both convenient and necessary, in considering dis- 

 ease, to bear in mind the alterations that take place in each 

 of the great systems of the body, as well as the general 

 expression or result of this ; moreover, nearly every dis- 



