The 7th edition of this work continues the teaching goals established in its prior editions :

(1) to free the teacher from serving as an interpreter of encyclopedic texts ;

(2) to direct students to important literature ;

(3) to discuss specialized and controversial problems ;

(4) to assist students to perceive tissues in the three spatial dimensions, as well as the fourth dimension of time (development).

During the last years, there has been a concerted effort to correlate clinical data with teaching of the basic sciences. In this regard, we have incorporated a brief section at the end of each chapter dealing with issues in pathology that correlate with the topic of that chapter. These sections were written with the goal of introducing concepts and terminology to medical students and first year residents, to facilitate their entering into the study of pathology.

Another new feature in this edition is the introduction of the immunohistochemical localization of molecules and individual cell types. This powerful tool of antigenic localization is extremely useful in demonstrating the distribution of different cell types in normal tissues, their molecular composition, and biosynthetic profile. These data have proven invaluable to the surgical pathologist in the study of tumors which have proven difficult to diagnose by conventional microscopy.