Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the pathological anatomy of the brain in insanity / by Adam Addison. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
3/30
![PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY OF THE BEAIN IN INSANITY. The Essay to which was awarded the Prize offered hy several Superintendents of Asylums formerly Assistant-Physicians in the Royal Edinburgh Asylum— to the SludenU of Dr. Shae's Class, Session 1861. ** Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out where the problem begins, and then to restrain himself within the limits of the comprehensible.”—Guthe. The great progress which medicine in general has made during recent years, must iu considerable part be ascribed to the ana- tomical direction it has assumed. The study of pathological anatomy has entirely changed the character of medical science, which, instead of a chaotic medley of unfounded theories and ingenious hypotheses, the fruits of speculation, is now a philos- ophic system resting on a firm foundation of facts with mutual and definite relations. To such an extent has the pathological investigation of disease been carried, that, in the ordinary mal- adies which attack the body, the instances are now exceptional W'here we cannot demonstrate certain gross, palpable changes of structure having an invariable causal connection with functional disturbance. By bringing diagnostics to our aid, we can also in many cases predict with confidence and precision the nature and extent of the lesion Avhich will be found after death. But tho triumph does not cease here. In conjunction with chemistry and the microscope, pathological anatomy has passed from the gross alterations of organs, and succeeded in elucidating the processes and changes which take place in their ultimate ele- ments; and Virchow, bringing to the subject all the zeal and instinct of genius, has given us an insight into the arcana of cell- life, and laid down the comprehensive generalisation as the basis of a iiew pathology, that the cell is tlie ultimate agent by which, both in health and disease, structural and functional alterations are effected. All the ])ractical departments of the healing art have participated more or less in this progress. Medicine proper, or that branch which restricts itself to the study of internal dis-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21955530_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
