THE GENERAL CONSTITUTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 91 
former. In other words, there are diseases of humors, dis- 
eases of tissues, and diseases of anatomical elements; but 
this diversity vanishes when we ascend to the common 
cause of all morbid phenomena, when we descry the efficient 
and inmost source of the disturbances, that is, the quanti- 
tative or qualitative modification of the immediate prin- 
ciples. Thus we come back to our starting-point, and find 
at the end of our study the proofs of the interest con- 
nected with the subject of its beginning. In fact, real and 
positive experimental medicine sets out from normal im- 
mediate principles, and rises by successive degrees from 
the knowledge of these to the understanding of anatomi- 
cal elements, tissues, humors, organs, systems. It begins 
with those immediate principles that are toxic, disease- 
producing, and medicinal; and it discovers the law of vari- 
ous pathogenic irregularities, as it does that of healing 
effects. All the animal organs and all the liquids of the 
system resolving themselves into immediate principles; all 
the metamorphoses of health and disease reducing them- 
‘selves to transformations of immediate principles ; all the 
effects of poisoning or of healing ending in the action of 
foreign principles upon normal principles; in a word, the 
most complex acts of life, whether regular or disordered, 
being explained, in the last analysis, by immediate prin- 
ciples—we may form an idea of the great importance of 
these. The instant that medical researches are ruled and 
guided by that necessity of referring facts to such a start- 
ing-point, the instant that experiments and observations 
converge toward that light, every thing becomes orderly, 
every thing finds its place, every thing gains significance. 
Uncertainties vanish. Science advances with regularity, 
and practice with assurance. In this manner general anat- 
omy exerts an influence of a constant and wholesome kind 
upon the increasingly rapid progress of medicine properly 
so called. 
