Page:The Harveian oration, 1893.djvu/55

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thorough-going method, we find the table almost useless, since the blanks are more numerous than the entries. If the liver, for example, were the possible seat of every tumour described in our college nomenclature of disease, it would be hopeless to attempt the diagnosis of an hepatic growth; if the small intestine were subject to every morbid change which can affect a mucous membrane, we should be lost amid such a crowd of possibilities. But Morbid Anatomy teaches us that each organ has its peculiar liabilities to disease, so that when we have determined the seat of a malady we have gone far towards establishing its nature. Moreover, such concomitant variations as hypertrophied left ventricle, and granular kidneys, basal meningitis and caseous lymph glands, visceral abscess and ulceration of the cardiac valves teach us much more than anatomy or diagnosis. They throw a clear light