If from these organic syllables we proceed to form organic words, we
shall find that Nature employs three principal forms; namely, Vessels,
Membranes, and Parenchyma, or visceral tissue. The most complex of them
can be resolved into a combination of these few simple anatomical
constituents.
Passing for a moment into the domain of PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY, we find the
same elements in morbid growths that we have met with in normal
structures. The pus-corpuscle and the white blood-corpuscle can only be
distinguished by tracing them to their origin. A frequent form of
so-called malignant disease proves to be only a collection of altered
epithelium-cells. Even cancer itself has no specific anatomical element,
and the diagnosis of a cancerous tumor by the microscope, though
tolerably sure under the eye of an expert, is based upon accidental, and
not essential points,--the crowding together of the elements, the size of
the cell-nuclei, and similar variable characters.
Let us turn to PHYSIOLOGY. The microscope, which has made a new science
of the intimate structure of the organs, has at the same time cleared up
many uncertainties concerning the mechanism of the special functions. Up
to the time of the living generation of observers, Nature had kept over
all her inner workshops the forbidding inscription, No Admittance! If
any prying observer ventured to spy through his magnifying tubes into the
mysteries of her glands and canals and fluids, she covered up her work in
blinding mists and bewildering halos, as the deities of old concealed
their favored heroes in the moment of danger.
Pages:
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282