The subject of pathology has been divided into many parts in order to make a complete inventory of changes in each organ and tissue, and in each biogony; but this, it should be clearly understood, is only a methodological expedient, created by ourselves. Pathology remains one and indivisable. Methodological necessity forces us to divide the pathological ensemble into fragments and to describe, on the one side, pneumonia, and on the other, typhoid fever; or, on the one side, Bright's disease, and, on the other diabetes; or on one side, gastric ulcer, and, on the other, uterine sarcoma ; etc., and this tends to obscure the fact that these conditions are merely links in a chain of united and interdependent sequences. There are hundreds of names which stand for various orders, subordinate classes and species of "disease," which have been worked out in the effort to classify "disease." We have fallen into the bad habit of regarding these subjective taxouomic orders as objective realities of nature, so that these nosological terms, descriptive of varying conditions of the body, are looked upon as names for entities. For each supposed entity we demand a specific germ, and this obscures the fundamental unity of all pathological phenomena. We see the terminal stages as entities only because we are unable to see the woods for the trees.

The present analytical vogue which seems to be gaining momentum, renders the conception of pathological unity more difficult, for it tends to separate or break up the more comprehensible old pictures, and gives us several "diseases" where only one existed before. Instead of attempting to describe for us the many aspects of one general condition, the pathologist attempts to individualize each fragment of the whole which he describes. The fictitious pathological entities thus created by heteropathic medicine become the object of treatment.

As shown in another chapter, Dr. Jennings divided the development of pathology into three more or less well-defined stages. Discussing what Heteropaths called "predisposition to disease," he says; "Orthopathy makes this predisposition of Heteropathy, the first stage of disease, and makes no difference in any of its stages; it is all of a piece from first to last. There are different stages and degrees, and different forms, but the nature and tendency is one throughout."--Philosophy of Human Life, p. 111.

This "first stage of disease" he regarded as the "first grade of degeneracy, verging toward the second grade, constantly liable, from a low state of vital powers, to be hurried into it" and said of the second stage:

"In this second stage or grade of degeneracy, we have what is called functional disease--a change from the natural (normal) condition of the functions of the body or parts of it. It may be in the form of what would be called a pleurisy, fever, or other form of derangement to which the body is liable--some external or sensible manifestation of internal difficulty."-- Tree of Life, pp. 117-118.

The third stage is one of structural impairment or change--organic "disease." But, he says: "There is no propriety in the common mode of computing physical defection--that part of it that obtains the appellation of disease. Whatever name is given to physical degeneracy should be made to include the whole of it, first, second, and third stages. It is all a damaged state, alike needing recruit and replenishment. The gradation in the line of degeneracy, from the elevated point of perfect structural and vital soundness to the commencement of the second stage where functional disturbance begins, must always be a lengthy one; for the distance between the two points is immense, and cannot be traversed by noxious agencies in one or two generations"--Tree of Life, p. 117.

In discussing idiopathic and symptomatic "diseases" he declared: "There is however, about as much propriety and utility in these attempts to discriminate between idiopathic and symptomatic diseases, as there would be in making a distinction between old debts and new ones. And when the vital economy is allowed the opportunity and can command the necessary means for liquidating her embarrassments, she will make about as much difference between indiopathic and symptomatic diseases, as an honest man would in the settlement of just claims against him, as he acquired the ability to do so, between old and new debts. When an individual gets largely in debt, whether from improvident husbandry, or the force of circumstances beyond his control, the extension of his indebtedness is natural and easy, if not unavoidable; and so when man's vital energies are broken down or very much impaired, it is not only natural and easy for one part after another to yield to the influence of disturbing causes, but absolutely impossible for them to do otherwise; not from sympathy, but because the overflowing scourge has at length reached them in its desolating effects, as it reached their neighbors before them; and their diseased condition is as truly idiopathic as that of the others."-- Philosophy of Human Life, p. 134.

While no analogy can go on all-fours, still an analogy often enables us to arrive at a clearer conception and better comprehension of a subject and attain a closer approximation to the truth about things. An analogy between the development of the body and the development of pathology will aid us in better understanding pathological evolution. We should keep clearly in mind, however, that pathology is not an entity or an organism, but merely a widening and increasing deterioration of an organism.

While any whole is evolving, there is always going on subsidary evolution of the parts into which it divides itself. This is true of the totality of things made up of parts within parts, from the greatest down to the smallest. We see this plainly in every physically cohering aggregate, such as an animal body. While it is growing larger and assuming its general form, each of its organs is doing the same. We recognize these organs as merely necessary groupings and differentiations, to facilitate the adjustments of the organism, and we recognize, also, that these organs are not different existences, but are component parts of one, unified, correlated, and interdependent organism. We know that the evolution of the organism and the evolution of its various organs do not represent several kinds of evolutions, but one evolution going on everywhere after the same manner.

It is wrong to divide pathology into several hundreds of varieties, species, genera, phyla, orders, and classes of "disease," and regard these so-called "diseases" as entities. While the objective reality of these "diseases" and the propriety of so classifying them is not questioned by individuals in the ranks of materia medica, the fact remains that so-called local "diseases" are merely local expressions of general states. Instead of the so-called "diseases" being different and specific "diseases," they are concomitant and successive developments out of common causes. They are parts of the same process; the continuity and unity of the process is nowhere broken. The evolution of the "local" pathology is part of and identical with the evolution of the general pathology. It is a serious blunder to single out each link in a series or chain of successive, concomitant and coetaneous developments and give to each a different name and ascribe to each a different cause.