week 1 lecture 1: introduction to pathology

• medicine, to produce health, must examine disease
• pathology = logos (the study of) + pathos (suffering)
• pathologists are physicians who specialize in understanding the causes and effects of diseases
• which kind of surgery did people of the Bronze age mainly partake in?

  brain, specifically trepanation/trephination
• what is trepanation?

  a circular piece of bone is drilled and excised, most commonly from the human skull
• Plutarch was a Greek biographer and essayist
• pathology encompasses the functional and structural changes in disease, from the molecular level to the organismal
• what is the goal of pathology?

  to identify and understand the nature and causes of diseases
• risk of cancer exponentially increases with age
• what is animism?

  inanimate objects may be able to cause disease
• humours

  trying to understand the balance of different substances in the body, and how this balance affects the body
• abiogenesis is the idea that life arose from non-life
• molecular-based pathology is the study of the molecular basis of disease
• modern and molecular pathology is evidence-based
• hippocrates and empedocles (500 B.C. to 1500 A.D.)
• between 500 B.C. and 1500 A.D., philosophers like Hippocrates and Empedocles believed that the underlying cause of diseases was due to an imbalance of humours
• what were the 4 humours?


  blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile.
• what term was used to describe an imbalance of the four humours?


  isonomia
• between 500 BC to 1500 AD, people understood anatomy very well but did not consider it to be useful, and therefore did not apply it
• ancient romans often stitched gladiators back, so were very knowledgeable (specifically about the blood system), but did not deem their knowledge important to the treatment of disease
• what is another term for abiogenesis?

  spontaneous generation
• spontaneous generation is inferred from the apparent appearance of life in supposedly sterile environments
• who was one of the earliest recorded scholars to articulate the theory of spontaneous generation?


  aristotle
• spontaneous generation was widely accepted up to 1800 AD
• name one scientist that believed in spontaneous theory?

  Jan Baptista van Helmont
• what was Jan Baptista van Helmont's experiment to prove spontaneous generation?


  place a dirty shirt/rags in a barrel containing a few grains of wheat; in 21 days, mice will appear
• name 3 scientists that made experiments to test abiogenesis


  1. francisco redi
  2. lazzaro spallanzani
  3. louis pasteur
• what was believed about diseases, due to spontaneous generation?

  diseases arose by metamorphosis independent of any external cause or other influence
• who is known as the father of modern pathology?

  rudolf carl virchow
• who is the pioneer for modern autopsy procedures?

  giovanni morgagni
• giovanni morgagni used autopsies to understand what went wrong and caused death
• what are the two stages of pathology?

  general and systematic
• what is general pathology?

  the mechanisms and characteristics of the principal types of disease processes
• name some principal types of disease process (i.e., general pathology)


  inflammation, tumours, and degenerations
• what is systematic pathology?

  the descriptions of specific diseases as they affect individual organs or organ systems
• name diseases affecting individual organs/organ systems (i.e., systematic pathology)

  appendicitis, lung cancer, atheroma
• what is aetiology?


  the cause of a disease
• pathogenesis


  something that initiates a disease
• what should you attempt to define for each disease?

  • epidemiology
  • aetiology
  • pathogenesis
  • risk factor
  • (genetic) predisposition
  • complications and sequelae
  • prognosis
  • treatment
• what is a sequela (pl. sequelae)?

  a condition which is the consequence of a previous disease or injury