1 
64 DADD'S VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 
In my discourse on inflammation, reference was made tu the 
views held by the ‘neuro-pathologists.’ Now, nervous pathology 
has been in medicine the ‘great scape-goat’ upon which more 
professional sins have been heaped than any other. ‘Nervous 
exhaustion,’ nervous irritation, etc., are a few of the many terma 
with which we seek to cloak our ignorance of the real nature of 
many disorders. the intimate nature of which is bevond our ken. 
Many accomplished practitioners still maintain that abnormal. 
vital phenomena may be, znd are likely to be, occasioned by 
dynamic aberrations alone, and that such phenomena are cor- 
rectly designated as functional disease. We can not concur in 
this opinion. W-at is called force of every description is con- 
nected with, if not dependent on, changes in the atoms of matter 
Force is the hypothetic agent which underlies the phenomena of 
material change; and to affirm that dynamic moilifications ef vital 
function may exist without alteration of material organization, is 
to ignore the fundamental principles of philosophic physiology. 
All diseases, therefore, in our opinion, is organic, even mental 
and nervous diseases of every kind and form. Not a thrill of 
sensation can occur, not a flashing thought or a passing fecling 
can take place, without changes in the living organism ; much lese 
ean diseased sensation, thought, or feeling occur without such 
vhanges—changes which we are not able to detect, and which we 
may never be able to demonstrate, but which we are, nevertheless, 
certain of. For, whether we adopt the theory that the states and 
things which we call heat, electricity, vitality, ete., are distinct 
entities of what is called ‘imponderable’ matter, or the far mere 
probable theory that they are only phenomena belonging te 
ordinary ponderable matter, an atom or a cell, charged with 
electricity or heat, or in a state of chemical activity, is essentially 
in-a different condition to a cell or an atom in chemical or elec- 
trical equilibrium with surrounding substances. Organic actions 
eau not exist without corresponding change: in material con 
jiton. The only force capable of explaining any of the phe 
nomena of life +s the chemical one, and this only in a state of 
constant activity and interminable change. Jn disease, the chemi- 
cal composition of the cells, or general matter, is altered from the 
standard of health, and this alteration of chemical composition is 
the real eranndworts of organic disease. Those abnormal states 
which depend upon an altered condition of the blood. are not lear 
