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GENERAL PATHOLOGY

By G. V. BLACK, M. D., D.D.S.

Introduction.
Health is a standard condition of the body in which all of its
functions are regularly and normally performed. Any marked devi-
ation from this is disease, no matter what the deviation may be. It is
impossible to frame a strict definition of this standard of health, for the
reason that it may vary within certain but rather wide limits. It is not
the same in all individuals, nor always the same even in the same
person. The various functions may, at different times or in different
individuals, vary quite perceptibly in their degree of activity consid-
ered as a whole, so that some persons are habitually more robust than
others. Again, among the individual functions some may be relatively
less active than others without an impairment of health that can prop-
erly be considered a diseased condition. Some functions may be more
active, others less so, and yet the departure from the normal equilibrium
of functional activity may not be such as to impair so seriously the
equable relation and mutual dependence of the various functions as to
justify us in considering the individual unsound in health. A person
may be fairly healthy and not be in the highest degree of health.
In disease there is a deviation in the performance of some one of
the functions of the economy so marked that the individual is readily
conscious of discomfort, or such morbid processes are in operation as
will l)ring about a condition of disability by their continued action.
In the great majority of diseased conditions the patient is at once made
conscious by his sensations that something is wrong. He becomes
aware of a departure from the normal state by a feeling of discomfort
either general or local. There are, however, some forms of disease so
insidious in their approach that the patient may not become conscious
of their presence until very serious mischief has been done. There-
fore the feelings of the person, while they are Usually a safe guide
as to the condition of the health, are not to be regarded as infallible.
A disease is an assemblage of morbid phenomena that have so often
been noticed to occur contemporaneously or to follow each other in a
certain order as to enable those skilled in their study to recognize them
as marking a special form of deviation from health. In the study
of these assemblages of symptoms, the groupings of which mark the
different diseases known to us, it has long been noted that certain patho-
logical states are common to various individual diseases. Of these the
most constant are changes in the circulation of the blood and in the
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