The appearance of this first volume brings the publication of my "Pathological Anatomy" to a close. As was the case with the earlier volumes, the completion of this one has been delayed by lack of leisure, and especially by long and repeated attacks of illness.

Whilst engaged in working out the design of this Pathological Anatomy, I have throughout endeavored to act the part of a clinical teacher; and I believe that, in so doing, I have apprehended the requirements of our day, and usefully disposed of the colossal materials within my reach.

The same self-reliance that characterized the commencement of my pathologico-anatomical studies, has stood by me whilst engaged in observing and interpreting the facts of which the said materials are composed: for, each individual discovery encouraged me more and more to pin my faith upon Nature alone. Still I have never failed to watch and to appreciate the achievements of other men.

The present work will at any rate tend to show, how thorough is my conviction that Pathological Anatomy must constitute the groundwork, not alone of all medical knowledge, but also of all medical treatment; nay, that it embraces all that medicine has to offer of positive knowledge, or at least of what is fundamental to it. Its domain will here, however, be found more extended, and more nearly approximated to the confines of Pathological Chemistry than has generally been the case in pathologico-anatomical writings.

Upon individual sections of the work I must confess to have exercised a certain favoritism; and I have striven to cultivate and to carry out some important general views, with a well-tested conviction of their truth. Amongst these views I may here single out for exemplification the doctrine of a primitive diversity in blastemata, as the only tenable basis for a humoral pathology.

From a comparison of the antecedently published volumes on special pathological anatomy with the present one, it will be seen that the former furnish the groundwork of the views here propounded, and that my convictions, upon the whole, remain unchanged.

THE AUTHOR.

Vienna, July, 1846.