Excerpt from Text-Book of General Pathology

In modern times physiology and pathology had a common starting-point in the doctrine of the cell as the ultimate unit of the animal body; but, nevertheless, they tended for many years to diverge. Physiology was concerned chiefly with certain specialized functions of cells, the phenomena of which hardly touch the problems of disease, and was hampered in its progress by the backward condition of such ancillary sciences as chemistry and physics. Pathology, greatly influenced by anatomy, was engaged with the observation of results rather than the elucidation of the underlying vital processes. Within recent years, however, the two sciences have converged again, for not only has the scope of physiological inquiry regarding the intimate processes of cellular life been broadening, but pathology, in recording such phenomena as those of perverted secretion or the effects of morbid cellular life on normal functions, has opened up new lines of inquiry for the physiologist. Disease, in fact, has often supplied physiological experiments far more delicate than any that could be performed in the laboratory. There is thus at present a constant interaction of the two sciences; the way has thus been opened up for the elucidation of the doctrine often foreshadowed by the older pathologists that the laws of disease are really the laws of health, and lack of co-ordination between the normal activities of the component tissues of the body is often the most important factor in the origin of disease.

Although the establishment of these principles is still very incomplete, it has seemed to the editors of this book that the time has come for another attempt to present, as far as it may be possible, the results obtained by the two sciences in working at the problems of disease.

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