In brief, it was an attack of root-problem of human disease. Doctors and
pathologists had hitherto been viewing disease from the aspect of its
myriad effects on the highly complex human being. It was as though one
were to attempt to understand the subtleties of some full-grown language
without first learning its elementary grammar--the foundations on which
its super-structure is reared.
Now Matheson, coming to the problem with a strong, fresh mind unhampered
by the swaddling clothes of a college training, saw it from a view-point
entirely different to that of the doctors. He wanted to know the
elementary grammar of human disease. He found that no book dealt with
it--nor attempted to deal with it. No recognized department of a medical
course took as its province the root-causes of disease. Pathology was a
study of effects. Bacteriology--that again was merely a study of
effects.
He had read widely amongst a variety of scientific research-matter, and
had found that here and there an isolated attack was being made on the
problem of causes. But nothing strong-planned--as any one of his
financial schemes would be planned--nothing co-ordinated. The researches
of the day were starting at points too complex, before the basic
conditions of the problem were known.
He wanted to learn, and to give to the world, the basic facts.
Disease, as he viewed it, was primarily the result of abnormal
conditions of living. His idea was to study it in its simplest possible
form.
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