Henry Baird Favill, AB, MD, LL.D., 1860-1916, a ... - University Library

ii6 HENRY BAIRD FAVILL
the reasoning is even approximately correct, it serves to
attract attention to the futility of approaching clinical
work through nomenclature. Much as I value the gift
of definition, I deplore the tendency to make it in any
degree explanatory. It must be purely descriptive, or it
becomes a cloud.
In the foregoing comments I have endeavored to show
how the familiar pictures of
entities,
disease appear to me; not as
but as phases in the activity of a common cause;
In this instance, as the reaction of various organs to a
strictly toxic agent, and with widely differing morphological
characteristics intimately correlated.