Organic Dependence and Disease : 
Their Origin and Significance. 
INTRODUCTION 
T HE purpose of this essay is to set forth a basis of 
fact and reasonable inference bearing on the com- 
prehension of the control which governs the histor- 
ical origin of dependent and abnormal conditions in the liv- 
ing world. 
The facts and their interpretations, together with their 
higher intimations as here presented, are based upon pale- 
ontological knowledge, that is to say, biological knowledge 
with the added element of unlimited time through which the 
life factors have worked. These are prime factors ; they 
together remove our subject and its conclusions from the 
field of purely modern biology. 
The knowledge we have little by little acquired in the spe- 
cial field indicated by our title does not as yet make a great 
sheaf and it is not likely that the facts, in spite of their pro- 
found interest to ns, can have any immediate value in the 
application of remedial measures in the correction of ab- 
normal physiology. This statement is, however, not made 
without some reserve ; a real clue to the inception of any 
abnormal physiology in nature must lead to interpretations 
of wide moment. 
For a good many years the writer has endeavored to 
gather together from the earliest assemblages of life on the 
earth as preserved in the ancient rocks, such organic re- 
mains as might shed light, not primarily on the introduc- 
tion of disease, as we loosely employ that term, but upon 
