Pathology comes from the Greek pathos, suffering or distressed state. Galen used the term for a disturbance of vital processes. The changing use of the term pathology indicates changing ideas about the study of disease. Most doctors would have conceived of pathology as morbid anatomy until the end of the 19th century when laboratory studies gave it a dynamic aspect.The autopsy (a word first used in English in 1678) has been traced to Italy in the late middle ages when autopsies were undertaken for forensic purposes. The term pathologia appeared in English in 1597 and it was agreed by 18th-century writers that pathology had reached its acme in Giovanni Battista Morgagni's mighty 1761 Latin Treatise, De Sedibus et Causis Morborum (On the Seats and Causes of Disease). However, Morgagni was upstaged by the Paris School of the early 19th century that used post mortems as a tool to develop bedside techniques of physical examination. With the use of the modern microscope half a century later, histological pathology was created.Experimental pathology based on animal work was created by, among others, the 18th-century Scotsman, John Hunter. A century later in Germany, physiological pathology was promoted and by the end of the 20th century a whole range of pathological sciences had been established. Pathology has long been at the centre of an unresolved medical debate about whether diseases are specific entities or extremes of normal states. In many contexts the use of the word fudges the issue of extreme normality versus specificity.Pathology has never lost its ancient references to angst. In 1681, “pathologie” was defined as the doctrine of the passions. In 1843, Jeremy Bentham talked of “Moral pathology” that “would consist in the knowledge of the feelings affections and passions”. Psychiatrists, marginal medical practitioners in the 19th century, endlessly discussed mental pathology. At the same time, historians such as Henry Thomas Buckle could write about civilisations and the “laws of their normal and pathological development”. In the 20th century, sociologists appropriated the term and books on social pathology are innumerable. Pathology and value judgments are now overtly linked—pathological liars abound, and psychopaths fill the courts and the media. We have not yet seen the end of the rampage of the word pathology. Pathology comes from the Greek pathos, suffering or distressed state. Galen used the term for a disturbance of vital processes. The changing use of the term pathology indicates changing ideas about the study of disease. Most doctors would have conceived of pathology as morbid anatomy until the end of the 19th century when laboratory studies gave it a dynamic aspect. The autopsy (a word first used in English in 1678) has been traced to Italy in the late middle ages when autopsies were undertaken for forensic purposes. The term pathologia appeared in English in 1597 and it was agreed by 18th-century writers that pathology had reached its acme in Giovanni Battista Morgagni's mighty 1761 Latin Treatise, De Sedibus et Causis Morborum (On the Seats and Causes of Disease). However, Morgagni was upstaged by the Paris School of the early 19th century that used post mortems as a tool to develop bedside techniques of physical examination. With the use of the modern microscope half a century later, histological pathology was created. Experimental pathology based on animal work was created by, among others, the 18th-century Scotsman, John Hunter. A century later in Germany, physiological pathology was promoted and by the end of the 20th century a whole range of pathological sciences had been established. Pathology has long been at the centre of an unresolved medical debate about whether diseases are specific entities or extremes of normal states. In many contexts the use of the word fudges the issue of extreme normality versus specificity. Pathology has never lost its ancient references to angst. In 1681, “pathologie” was defined as the doctrine of the passions. In 1843, Jeremy Bentham talked of “Moral pathology” that “would consist in the knowledge of the feelings affections and passions”. Psychiatrists, marginal medical practitioners in the 19th century, endlessly discussed mental pathology. At the same time, historians such as Henry Thomas Buckle could write about civilisations and the “laws of their normal and pathological development”. In the 20th century, sociologists appropriated the term and books on social pathology are innumerable. Pathology and value judgments are now overtly linked—pathological liars abound, and psychopaths fill the courts and the media. We have not yet seen the end of the rampage of the word pathology.