Excerpt from Notes on the Lectures of John Guitéras on General and Special Pathology: Delivered Before the Second and Third Year Students of the University of Pennsylvania, And on the Lectures of Joseph McFarland on Bacteriology, Delivered Before the Third Year Class

Pathology is that branch of the science of medicine which concerns itself with the study of the manifestations of energy and the changes in structure which take place in a diseased living being. Broadly speaking, it is the science of disease.

The term "disease" includes all those disturbances of the normal manifestations of life which impair, more or less, the adaptability of the individual to surrounding media.

By "a disease" we understand a group of such modifications occurring with sufficient regularity of association to constitute a distinct species.

Disease adds no new element to the body, it merely modifies previously existing functions and structures. We deal, therefore, in pathology with two factors: the changes in the function, i. e., the manifestations of energy, and the changes in the structure, of diseased organs or tissues.

The first recognizable change is one affecting the structure. But we cannot conceive of such a change occurring without some antecedent force or cause to bring it about. This fundamental cause is believed to be certain obscure functional derangements which lead to modifications of structure, and these, in turn, to secondary changes of function. The last become recognizable to us as the symptoms of the disease.

Divisions of Pathology.

Analogous to the division of Biology into Morphology, Physiology, and Embryology, Pathology is divided into Morbid Anatomy, or the study of the changes of structure in disease, Morbid Physiology, the study of the changes of function in disease, and Etiology, the study of the causation of disease.

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