views opened by the discoveries of Pasteur on the side of pathogeny, and of J. F. Cohnheim (1839–1884) and of Fevers and Inflamma-tions. Iliya Metchnikoff on the dynamical side of histology. Of the older ontological notions of disease the strongest were those of the essence of fever and of the essence of inflammation. Broussais had done much to destroy the notion of fever as an entity, but by extravagances in other directions he had discredited the value of his main propositions. Yet, although, as Andral and other French physicians proved, it was extravagant to say that all fevers take their origin from some local inflammation, it was true and most useful to insist, as Broussais vehemently insisted, that “fever” is no substance, but a generalization drawn from symptoms common to many and various diseases springing from many various and often local causes; from causes agreeing perhaps only in the factor of elevation of the temperature of the body. To the establishment of this new conception the improvement and general use of the clinical thermometer gave invaluable advantages. This instrument, now indispensable in our daily work at the bedside, had indeed long been known both to physiologists (Haller) and to clinicians. In the 18th century A. de Haën, and, in the United Kingdom, George Cleghorn (1716–1789) of Dublin and James Currie (1756–1805), carried on the use of the thermometer in fevers; and on the continent of Europe in later years F. G. F. von Bärensprung (1822–1865) and Ludwig Traube (1818–1876) did the same service; but it is to the work of Karl August Wunderlich (1815–1877) that we owe the establishment of this means of precision as a method of regular observation both in pathology and in clinical medicine. By his almost exhaustive comparison of febrile movements as symptomatic processes Wunderlich dealt the last blow to the expiring doctrine of the “entity” of “fever”; while on the clinical side Bretonneau and Louis, in 1862–1872, by their careful clinical and pathological studies of forms of fever, relieved the new doctrine of the extravagances of Broussais, and prepared the way for the important distinction of enteric from typhus fever by A. P. Stewart (1813–1883), William Jenner, William Budd (1811–1880), Charles Murchison (1830–1879), J. H. F. Autenrieth (1772–1835), Heinrich Gustav Magnus (1802–1870), Huss and others. By the learned and accomplished Armand Trousseau British and German influences were carried into France.
Meanwhile Cohnheim and Metchnikoff were engaged in destroying the ontological conception not of fever only, but also of inflammation, of which, as a local event, an ontological conception was no less strongly implanted. By his researches on the migration of the white corpuscles of the blood Cohnheim, on the bases laid by Virchow, brought the processes of inflammation within the scope of the normal, seeing in them but a modification of normal processes under perturbations of relatively external incidence; even the formation of abscess was thus brought by him within the limits of perversion of processes not differing essentially from those of health; and “new formations,” “plastic exudations,” and other discontinuous origins of an “essential” pathology, fell into oblivion. And it is not alien from the present point of view to turn for a moment to the light thrown on the cardio-arterial pulse and the measurement of its motions by the more intimate researches into the phenomena of the circulation by many observers, among whom in the 19th century James Hope, E. J. Marey (1830–1904) and C. F. W. Ludwig will always take a leading place. By them the demonstration of Harvey that the circulation of the blood is in large part a mechanical process, and nowhere independent of mechanical laws, was considerably enlarged and extended. In particular the fluctuations of the pulse in fevers and inflammations were better understood, and accurately registered; and we can scarcely realize now that before Harvey the time of the pulse seems not to have been counted by the watch. Discovery in these various directions then led physicians to regard fever and inflammation not as separable entities, but as fluctuating-symptom groups, due to swervings of function from the normal balance under contingent forces.
As to such reforms in our conceptions of disease the advances of bacteriology profoundly contributed, so under the stress of consequent discoveries, almost prodigious in their extent and revolutionary effect, the conceptions of the etiology of disease underwent no less a transformation than the conceptions of disease itself. It is New Conceptions of Etiology. proper to point out here how intimately a pathology thus regenerated modified current conceptions of disease, in the linking of disease to oscillations of health, and the regarding many diseases as modifications of the normal set up by the impingement of external causes; not a few of which indeed may be generated within the body itself—“autogenetic poisoning.” The appreciation of such modifications, and of the working of such causes, has been facilitated greatly by the light thrown upon normal processes by advances in physiology; so dependent is each branch of knowledge upon the advances of contiguous and incident studies. To biological chemistry we have been deeply indebted during the latter half of the 19th century. In 1872, Hoppe-Seyler (1825–1895) gave a new beginning to our knowledge of the chemistry of secretion and of excretion; and later students have increased the range of physiological and pathological chemistry by investigations not only into the several stages of albuminoid material and the transitions which all foodstuffs undergo in digestion, but even into the structure of protoplasm itself. Digestion, regarded not long ago as little more than a trituration and “coction” of ingesta to fit them for absorption and transfer them to the tissues, now appears as an elaboration of peptones and kindred intermediate products which, so far from being always bland, and mere bricks and mortar for repair or fuel for combustion, pass through phases of change during which they become so unfit for assimilation as to be positively poisonous. The formation of prussic acid at a certain period of the vital processes of certain plants may be given as an example of such phases; and poisons akin to muscarin seem to arise frequently in development or regression, both in animals and plants. Thus the digestive function, in its largest sense, is now seen to consist, not only in preparation and supply, but in no small measure also of protective and antidotal conversions of the matters submitted to it; coincidently with agents of digestion proper are found in the circuit of normal digestion “anti-substances” which neutralize or convert peptones in their poisonous phases; an autochthonous ferment, such as rennet for instance, calling forth an anti-rennet, and so on. Now as our own bodies thus manipulate substances poisonous and antidotal, if in every hour of health we are averting self-intoxication, so likewise are we concerned with the various intruding organisms, whose processes of digestion are as dangerous as our own; if these destructive agents, which no doubt are incessantly gaining admission to our bodies, do not meet within us each its appropriate compensatory defensive agent, dissolution will begin. Thus, much of infection and immunity are proving to be but special cases of digestion, and teleological conceptions of protective processes are modified.
Under the name of chemotaxis (W. Pfeffer) are designated certain of the regulative adaptations by which such ends are attained. By chemical warnings the defensive processes seem to be awakened, or summoned; and when we think of the infinite variety of such possible phases, and of the multitude of corresponding defensive agents, Natural Resistance. we may form some dim notion of the complexity of the animal blood and tissues, and within them of the organic molecules. Even in normal circumstances their play and counterplay, attractive and repellent, must be manifold almost beyond conception; for the body may be regarded as a collective organization consisting of a huge colony of micro-organisms become capable of a common life by common and mutual arrangement and differentiation of function, and by toleration and utilization of each other’s peculiar products; some organs, such as the liver, for example, being credited with a special power of neutralizing poisons, whether generated under normal conditions or under abnormal, which gain entrance from the intestinal tract. As a part of these discoveries has arisen another but kindred doctrine
