[Determining the meaning of the concept of etiology]

The standpoint is taken that the understanding of causality in the medical science needs a precisation of its substance. In analyzing a number of textbooks of general pathology, beginning with the middle of the 19th century, the views of leading pathologists to this problem are reviewed. In consequence of this analysis an increase of cognition to the problem of etiology is to recognize. But it seems necessary to define the ideas on this field in using the dialectic determinism. This belongs to the following objects: etiology, causal and formal pathogenesis and causality. Using the term etiopathogenesis seems not to be efficient. In contrast the term of pathogenetic acting principal seems to be useful, but precisation of its substance is necessary.