To begin, a word of explanation and several words of thanks.

I cannot remember reading a book with an exposition based on selection principles quite like those I ended up using in this work. While the central account of the monograph is of persons who will be well known in at least bare outline to most readers, I have moved off (especially in the second half of the monograph) into territory that is considerably more arcane. Why, after sketching the evolution of pathological anatomy in its fullest development in France, should one allow the story to veer off on paths that seem to fall short of the traditional “important” feat of progress?

The answer, as the reader might expect, lies in my reasons for writing the book in the first place. I have not intended to provide a symmetrical comparison of French and British pathology in the era before the microscope, but sought rather to look at the reception of a suite of medical ideas in one culture after examining how they unfolded in another. My intention was to study the development of pathological anatomy and, in particular, tissue pathology in France and then scrutinize various attempts to implant it in England.