Pathology, the study of the causes and products of diseases, is a
younger science than physiology: the use of the microscope was the
beginning of pathology; and the microscope, even so late as sixty
years ago, was very different to the microscope now. The great
pathologists of that time had not the lenses, microtomes, and reagents
that are now in daily employment; they knew nothing of the present
methods of section-cutting and differential staining. But the
publication in 1839 of Schwann's cell-theory marks the rise of modern
pathology. In 1843, Darwin wrote his first draft of the doctrine of
the origin of species; and Pasteur, that year, was in for his
examination at the École Normale. The work of Schwann, Virchow, and
Pasteur had such profound influences on science that the span of sixty
years seems to cover the modern development of pathology: and this
span of years is marked, half-way, by the rise of bacteriology. In
1875, when the Royal Commission on Experiments on Animals was held in
London, the evidence was concerned practically with physiology alone:
very little was said about pathology, and of bacteriology hardly a
word. The witnesses say that they "believe they are beginning to get
an idea" of the true nature of tubercle: and the evidence as to the
nature of anthrax, given by Sir John Simon, reads now like a very old
prophecy:--
"We are going through a progressive work that has many stages,
and are now getting more precise knowledge of the contagium. By
these experiments on sheep it has been made quite clear that the
contagium of sheep-pox is _something of which the habits can be
studied: as the habits of a fern or a moss can be studied: and
we look forward to opportunities of thus studying the contagium
outside the body which it infects. This is not a thing to be
done in a day, or perhaps in ten years, but must extend over a
long period of time._ Dr. Klein's present paper represents one
very important stage of a vast special study. He gives the
identification of the contagium as _something which he has
studied to the end in the infected body, and which can now in a
future stage be studied outside the body_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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