so far as the human organism is concerned, by the very completeness of the knowledge of it.
Did time permit it would not be difficult to show, as indeed has in part already been done, that as the intimate structure of the tissues became revealed, so was the way cleared for a sounder Physiology, whether by a more rational understanding of what observation and experiment had disclosed, or by indicating the direction in which observation and experiment might be fruitfully continued.[1]
The progress of histological research has been marked by one great feature far-reaching in its effects and of fundamental importance—the recognition of the cell as the tissue unit. And whilst this has served to give completeness to the views of tissue structure, and especially of
- ↑ In the record of histological advance mention must be made of Haller's Elementa Physiologiæ (1757), which first presented in a collected form the most correct information on the structure of the tissues; and of Bichat's Anatomie Generale (1801), a still more comprehensive work on the same lines in which also the foreshadowing of the cellular nature of the tissues, established by Schwann in 1838, was faintly indicated, although the word "cell" was not used. To the labours of John Goodsir and still more to the epoch-making work of Virchow on Cellular Pathology (1858), must be ascribed the demonstration of the fact that our conceptions of morbid processes must be founded on a histological basis, a doctrine that the great Pathologist's Archives für Pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und für Klinische Medizin, has for nearly half a century consistently expounded.
