Some examples will render the point of doctrine which is important, more evident. The stomach is composed of the serous, organic muscular, mucous, and of almost all the common textures, as the arterial, the venous, etc., which we can consider separately. Now if you should attempt to describe in a general manner, the peculiar life of the stomach, it is evidently impossible that you could give a very precise and exact idea of it. In fact the mucous surface is so different from the serous, and both so different from the muscular, that by associating them together, the whole would be confused. The same is true of the intestines, the bladder, the womb, etc.; if you do not distinguish what belongs to each of the textures that form the compound organs, the term peculiar life will offer nothing but vagueness and uncertainty. This is so true, that oftentimes the same textures alternately belong or are foreign to their organs. The same portion of the peritoneum, for example, enters or does not enter, into the gastric viscera, according to their fulness or vacuity. Shall I speak of the pectoral organs? What has the life of the fleshy texture of the heart in common with that of the membrane that surrounds it? Is not the pleura independent of the pulmonary texture? Has this texture nothing in common with the membrane that surrounds the bronchia? Is it not the same with the brain with relation to its membranes, of the different parts of the eye, the ear, etc.? When we study a function it is necessary carefully to consider in a general manner, the compound organ that performs it; but when you wish to know the properties and life of this organ, it is absolutely necessary to decompose it. In the same way, if you seek only general notions of anatomy, you can study each organ as a whole; but it is essential to separate the textures, if you have a desire to analyze with accuracy its intimate structure. CONSEQUENCES OF THE PRECEDING PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO DISEASE What I have been saying leads to important consequences, as it respects those acute or chronic diseases that are local; for those which, like most fevers, affect almost simultaneously every part, cannot be much elucidated by the anatomy of systems. The first then will engage our attention. Since diseases are only alterations of the vital properties, and each texture differs from the others in its properties, it is evident that there must be a difference also in the diseases. In every organ, then, composed of different textures, one may be diseased, while the others remain sound; now this happens in a great many cases; let us take the principal organs, for example.