摘要：

Progress in medicine always has depended primarily on the solution of the basic problem of the mechanism of the production of disease. In some fields, as for example that of infectious diseases, the basic factors are known in quantity sufficient to provide diagnosis and treatment on a plane of efficiency which removes many of them from a position of threat to longevity. In other fields, however, so few of these factors are known that any attempt to reconstruct the mechanism of these diseases can result in nothing more acceptable than a working hypothesis, with all the limitations that this implies. Nevertheless, such working hypotheses, provided that they are founded on facts, even if there are few, are fundamentally important in laying a foundation on which construction, and in certain details perhaps reconstruction, may lead to a universally acceptable account of the mechanism of the disease. Additionally, of immediate practical value

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