Pathology

Pathology (from the Gr. pathos, 'disease,' and logos, 'a discourse') is that department of medicine which treats of the doctrine of diseases, their nature, causes, symptoms, and progress. General pathology deals with disease or morbid processes in general, and special pathology with particular diseases. Pathology is also divided into internal and external, and into medical and surgical. Pathology may be treated as falling into the departments of nosology, aetiology, morbid anatomy or pathological anatomy, symptomatology, and therapeutics. Humoral pathology was based on the theory that all diseases were due to the disordered condition of the humours and fluids of the body. Cellular pathology, associated with the name of Virchow, gives prominence to the action of cells in the healthy and diseased functions of the body. See ANATOMY, DISEASE, MEDICINE, PHYSIOLOGY, and the articles on the several diseases in this work; also works on pathology by Wilks and Moxon (1875), Wagner (Eng. trans. 1876), Coats (1883), Delafield and Prudden (New York, 1885), Cornil and Ranvier (trans. 1886), Woodhead (1885), Ziegler (trans. 1883-86), Payne (1888), Hamilton (1889), Rindfleisch (trans. 1885), Sutton (1886).