Excerpt from A Text-Book of Pathology for Students of Medicine It will at first glance be thought that two large publications upon the same subject by the same author within a relatively brief space of time must be alike. We venture to think that the reader will not find in this work any lengthy excerpt from "The Principles of Pathology," but on the contrary will find considerable evidence of modification. Its birth, however, in a certain sense may be laid at the door of the previous work, to be presently explained. Long ago one of the authors of this work was approached by its publishers, and he agreed to write a text-book of pathology of some seven hundred pages, a book, in fact, the size of this lying open before the reader. The result of many years of writing and re-writing was a mass of material sufficient to make two volumes each of one thousand pages or thereabouts, one upon General Pathology, the other in collaboration with our colleague Professor A.G. Nicholls upon Systemic and Special Pathology. The scheme and scope of the manuscript were not what the publishers had sought; nevertheless with rare good-will Messrs. Lea Febiger undertook publication, and doing this took an undoubted risk. The ordinary medical student could scarce be expected to acquire, still less to master, the two ponderous tomes; it was problematic whether the more ambitious and advanced student and the practitioner would be attracted to them. Fortunately, these two volumes of the "Principles" were well received, and when after the issue of a second edition Messrs. Lea Febiger asked that the original contract be fulfilled and that we afford a text-book which should within the covers of a single volume contain the gist of our subject, the loyal support given by them to the previous undertaking rendered it difficult to refuse. Their desire was seconded by appeals from colleagues in not a few schools for something which would embody the main features of the former work without its bulk. Let us confess that we found ourselves in a quandary. We were averse to what might so easily become an act of commonplace book making. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.