Anwar Ul Haque
Professor & Head, Department of Pathology,
Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Islamabad.

There are several basic cellular and tissue reactions, each of which may present in myriads of
ways to the student of pathology! These manifestations may appear totally unrelated and
separate phenomena to the student. As the same disease process affects different organs and systems
with different symptoms & signs, he may try to memorize each of these aspects separately in an
uncoordinated and unrelated manner. This makes learning pathology very boring and burdensome.
Almost all textbooks of pathology have divided the pathology text into general and systemic
pathology sections. Inflammation, healing, repair, congestion and edema etc. are covered in “great detail” in
these textbooks. These include rather boring and
unnecessary descriptions of zillions of mediators
and factors. The details are generally not linked with
short applied descriptions of clinical manifestations.
As a result the student finds pathology a dull
“basic” subject.