§ 4. Inflammation of the Lungs II. SPECIAL DISEASES AS EXEMPLIFYING DISSOLUTION AND DISSOLUTION AND EVOLUTION AND THE SCIENCE OF MEDICINE. INTRODUCTORY. HERBERT SPENCER has brought many to the conviction that his view of the processes of nature as divisible into evolutional and dissolutional processes is essentially veracious. If the formulas which he has given to us, setting forth the salient features of these processes, are placed in apposition with any group of natural changes coming within the purview of observation, there is discovered an invariable correspondence between the formulas and the facts they purport to represent. It does appear from examination that all the changes going on within and without us have the characters of the one or the other order of mutations, and that the generalisations, in their most abstract form, really stand for universal verities. Therefore it may be possible to translate the facts of any science in terms of these all-embracing principles. In our endeavour to do this with the data of pathology the mode of exposition will be to take the B formulated statements of the principles and compare with them the facts they are expected to unify. First, the essential truths of general pathology, as those of inflammation, suppuration, repair, and resolution, will be considered in respect of their conformability to the formulas. Next, the retrograde metamorphoses and neoplasms will be looked at from the same points of view, later chapters including a rough inspection. of the general pathological changes as they are presented in special diseases. Finally, the results will be considered from practical aspects. This manner of presentation seems to possess superiority in simplicity and directness, and in permitting a comprehensive survey of the field. The difficulties are of some magnitude in the way of making intelligible application of doctrines as elaborate in organisation as the doctrines of evolution and dissolution; and any other method of presentation would, perhaps, have involved an undesirable discursiveness of exposition. Some acquaintance with 'First Principles' will be required for the easy understanding of all that follows; but I am in hope that the simple arrangement adopted will make the work acceptable to medical readers unfamiliar with the Synthetic Philosophy. |