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upon the nature and the origin of diseases, and hence upon their prevention and cure.[1]
True, there are functional disorders and others which are toxic or parasitic; but it is the object of the study of Morbid Anatomy to limit, and, as nearly as may be, to abolish the former group by tracing disordered functions to structural changes or to poisonous or parasitic influences. We may measure the progress of medical science during the present century by the fact that Fever, Dropsy, Paralysis and Apoplexy are for us no longer diseases but only symptoms which leave us unsatisfied till we have traced them to their origin.
It has often been questioned whether the study of Morbid Anatomy has not withdrawn attention from Morbid Physiology; and, again, whether the time employed upon pathological
- ↑ See Dr. Wilks’s article in Guy’s Hospital Reports for 1865 (3rd series, Vol. xi., p. 1).
