LABORATORIES AND PROBLEMS 



best or worst, there will still remain a fair contingent 

 of maladies that cannot fairly be brought within the 

 domain of the ever-present "germ." On the other 

 hand, all germ diseases have of course their particular 

 effects upon the system, bringing their results within 

 the scope of the pathologist. Thus while the bac- 

 teriologist has no concern directly with any disease 

 that is not of bacterial origin, the pathologist has a 

 direct interest in every form of disease whatever; in 

 other words, bacteriology, properly considered, is only 

 a special department of pathology, just as pathology 

 itself is only a special department of general medicine. 



Whichever way one turns in science, subjects are 

 always found thus dovetailing into one another and 

 refusing to be sharply outlined. Nevertheless, here as 

 elsewhere, there are theoretical bounds that suffice for 

 purposes of definition, if not very rigidly lived up to 

 in practice; and we are justified in thinking of the 

 pathologist (perhaps I should say the pathological 

 anatomist) as the investigator of disease who is di- 

 rectly concerned with effects rather than with causes, 

 who aims directly at the diseased tissue itself and 

 reasons only secondarily to the causes. His prob- 

 lem is : given a certain disease (if I may be permitted 

 this personified form of expression), to find what tis- 

 sues of the body are changed by it from the normal 

 and in what manner changed. 



It requires but a moment's reflection to make it 

 clear that a certain crude insight into the solution of 

 this problem, as regards all common diseases, must have 

 been the common knowledge of medical men since the 

 earliest times. Thus not even medical knowledge 



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