PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY, or the anatomy of diseased organs, is included in, but must not be confounded with pathology, as until comparatively lately was often the case. It is merely a section—although a most important section—of pathology, con tributing (as prof. Vogel has well remarked "to practical medicine the solid materials from which to construct a basement, without having the power to erect a perfect edifice." Pathological anatomy enables the surgeon to decide whether a suspicious tumor is malig nant or of a comparatively harmless nature, and in many other ways is of the grntest importance to surgery; and although at first sight it might appear to be of small impor tance in relation to therapeutics, this is not in reality the case. Scientific treatment necessarily demands an accurate knowledge of the material changes which lie at the foundation of the various morbid symptoms. Hence pathological anatomy not only forms a portion of (lie positive basis of therapeutics, but it also points out the processes by which the different altered parts may be gradually restored to their normal condition.
It not merely indicates what requires healing, but in many cases also the course that must be adopted in order to aid the curative tendency of nature. It likewise serves as a check on therapeutics, exposing, in a most conclusive manner, the absurdity of many pretended methods of cure. It points out, for example, that in a certain stage of inflam mation of the lungs (pneumonia) a fibrinous fluid separates from the blood, and by its coagulation renders a portion of the tissue of the lung impermeable to air; and further that it requires several days for this coagulated matter to resume the fluid condition and to be removed. If any one should assert—and such assertions have often been made— that in this stage of the disease he could apply a remedy which would cure the patient in it few hours, a very slight knowledge of pathological anatomy would show the folly of such an assertion. The best English works on this subject are Vogel's Pathological Anatomy of the Human Body, and Jones and Sievekiug's Manual of Pathological Anatomy.