Miscellany

1880 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal  
in the cell life, which we do not understand." The present clinical distinctions will not be obliterated by this view, but " if the so-called pneumonic phthisis has a separate history, gives points for special diagnosis and prognosis, requires different treatment, it ought, no matter what our views of its real pathology, to be recognized as a distinct form. But," he concludes, " let us go no further ; we are leaving the broad highway for rough and tortuous paths, when, as is the tendency of the
more » ... present day, we attempt to sweep all cases of lung destruction into the phthisical category." Since the reading of the above, an abstract of Cohnheim's monograph has appeared1 in the British Medical Journal for May 8, 1880, in which very similar conclusions are arrived at concerning the specific characteristics of tubercle, which is declared to be due to a special inoculable poison. The fluctuations of opinion in regard to the pathology of tubercle are well exemplified in the medical literature of the last twenty years ; and to the physiologist, accused of annually altering his facts, it is gratifying to see that since pathology is not an exact science it not infrequently demonstrates its progressive condition by accepting changes when they are duly authenticated by physiological experiment.
doi:10.1056/nejm188007221030409 fatcat:ifhjdvsmvfacdhhzkngl4wvddq