[A dispute about the concept of 'disease' in Dutch Journal of Medicine, 1863].

Professor Schrant, in his inaugural lecture held in Leiden in 1862, brought under discussion the views held at that time about the concept of 'disease'. These were determined on the one hand by empiricism, experience gained at the bedside and the dissecting table, and on the other by the 'ontological disease concept' which saw disease as an autonomous being with characteristic properties. Schrant, however, regarded diseases as a physiological experiment happening by coincidence, as an 'abnormal way of life of the animal body'.