[Pathology 2001: odysssey and navigation].

: The opening of a new millennium might be a suitable moment of looking backward and, moreover, to look forward what will happen to medicine in general and to pathology in particular during the next decades. In the 19th century, the concept of cellular pathology was ushered into medicine explaining diseases by basic cell and tissue injuries. The 20th century was characterized by a tremendous methodical progress in morphology connecting the cellular concept without a gap to present molecular medicine. In this opening address, famous pathologists are represented as examples for the different aspects of scientific and practical pathology, which has continually contributed authoritative information with clinically relevant significance to the understanding of diseases of man. The deciphering of the human genome shall have implications for several medical disciplines including pathology. However, much has to be done to find all the links between genomic abnormalities and the complete causal and formal pathogenesis of known and unknown diseases. Morphological studies carried out by the wide spectrum of methods available in modern pathology are regarded as the best effort to explain the structural aspects of the many human diseases. Taken together, the anatomic concept of disease completed by a genome-wide view shall remain the speciality of scientific medicine, so that basic and diagnostic pathology shall not perish in the future.