1.
In Quest of tomorrow´s medicines
2.
Human Disease
From genetic
causesto biochemical effects
genetic causes to
biochemical effects
Blackwell science, 1998
Ex libris (Roche) Vol. 9
ISBN 3-89412-358-3
order
a number of comprehensive attempts to define
and understand diseases, and to derive from such
definitions diagnostic criteria as well as methods
of therapeutic intervention. The first of these para-
digmatic approaches was morphology. In contrast
to other influences on medicine, morphology,
anatomy and pathological anatomy did not come
from outside. They were synonymous with medicine
itself. The human body, which during the middle
ages had been regarded as the incarnation of the
divine will, became the most prominent object of
anatomical studies. The study of structure led
inevitably to questions about function. It is not sur-
prising that the evolution of physiology followed the
description of anatomy. Towards the end of the
18th and during the greater part of the l9th century,
pathological anatomy emerged as a descriptive
and experimental science, which helped to establish
a morphological and physiological concept of
human disease. Our classification of diseases,
much of our morphological and functional diagnosis
and, of course, our basic rules and strategies for
surgical interventions go back to this morphological
approach to disease.
