ORGANIC DEPENDENCE AND DISEASE 7 



anyone concerned with the origin of our actual inheritance 

 of specific pathological conditions/ 



It hardly seems necessary to premise that pathological 

 conditions, or diseases, to speak specifically, are as much a 

 matter of evolution as the human hand or the bird's wing. 

 The statement of so obvious a fact here would have seemed 

 superfluous except for the sharp citation recently served 

 upon his colleagues by an eminent physician, that ''human 

 maladies are but a narrow fringe along the border line of 

 disease,"^ which would seem to intimate that repetitive 

 emphasis may wisely be laid upon this statement. 



In the ancient rock formations and the life assemblages 

 with which we are here dealing there are few of these 

 higher creatures, the vertebrates, and among them speciali- 

 zation in organs and function has gone so far as to becloud 

 the record we are seeking to disclose. Here the effort is to 

 take the simplest and least differentiated expressions of 

 life conditions in their earliest appearance, before the living 

 world had become so inexpressibly complicated as it is to- 

 day or so indelibly stamped by the accumulated heritage 

 of boundless ages. It may be said that these investigations, 

 which rest upon the certain results of the laws of life, lead 

 the reflective mind into passages tangent to human con- 

 cerns of high moment. 



We shall need for the immediate purpose a clear under- 

 standing of what is meant by disease, as the term is here 

 used. Our employment of the word is a rather loose one ; 

 probably no physiologist or pathologist would be satisfied 

 with it, if indeed the term could be adapted to modern path- 

 ological use. It has at best only a popular value and its ap- 

 plication is without scientific exactness. Thus, tuberculosis 



1 Eoy L. Moodie. 1916, American Journal of Science, v. 41: 530-31; 1916, 

 Science, v. 43: 425; 1917, "Annals of Medical History," pp. 374-93. 



2E. G. Eeeles. "The Scope of Disease," Medical Eecord, March 8, 1913. 

 The reader is also referred to Doctor Eccles 's other important papers in this 

 field: "Disease and Genetics," op. cit., August 2, 1913; "Parasitism and Nat- 

 ural Selection," op. cit., July 31, 1909. 



