Symbolic logic as a new method in quantitative organelle pathology

The multiplicity of morphometric investigations has led to an explosive growth in data which, without further interpretation, remain buried in the literature as a sort of data cemetery. The following paper lays the foundation for a "recycling" of these data, using a quantitative organelle pathology expressed in terms of symbolic logic. Data from 105 morphometric studies (in part from the literature, in part from our laboratory) served as the basis for constructing a quantitative organelle pathology of growth disorders, in which nine-and only nine-pathologic states suffice to describe the entire range of cellular injury. These nine pathologic states in turn correspond to five-and only five-morphologic states which give the mean change in organelle size (single volume, cistern width) in terms of five differentsized configuration classes. These nine pathologic and five morphologic states make it possible to express the average ultrastructural change in a cell during cellular injury which is both easy to visualize and unambiguous. Furthermore, this quantitative organelle pathology represents an alphabet from which we can construct reaction patterns of the cell organelles considered as a whole, such as are typical for the various levels of cellular injury.