Inflammation

“ When scrophulous inflammation is excited in the vicinity of a part already possessing this action, it occasionally removes the action from that part, in the same way as inducing simple inflammation by a blister in one part cures the same disease in another part in the vicinity. ”

“ Inflammation of the Lungs and Organs of Respiration, is a frequent inflammation in northern climates; and most so in spring, autumn, and winter; when the body, hydraulick canals, and blood are in a state of inflammatory diathesis: it generally encounters the robust vigorous constitution, those of strong muscular fibre, and dense rich blood; the athletick rustick, manufacturer, and artizan; those in the prime, and in all the intervals between twenty and the decline of life: it is very rare in infancy, as in idiopathick disease, and seldom under puberty, or in old age. ”

“ Inflammation may be defined to be, an unnatural or perverted action of the capillary blood vessels of an organ or part of the body, attended with redness, throbbing, swelling, pain, heat, and disorder of function, as well as with more or less disturbance of the system.
Every part of the body is liable to inflammation ”

“ For the object of the treatment, in these cases, is not to remove, but to avert the inflammation, and which, from the strong disposition to it, conferred by the organic disease, can only be effected by avoiding, not merely the causes of inflammation, but likewise, all those agents, which are calculated, in any way, to increase the momentum of the circulation. ”

“ The most advanced works on pathology admit the constructive and beneficial character of inflammation. However, when it comes to the treatment of acute diseases, physicians seem to forget entirely this basic principle of pathology, and treat inflammation and fever as though they were, in themselves, inimical and destructive to health and life. ”

“ Inflammation means simply a burning. If there is irritation or an injury at any spot, the blood sets thither and reddens it. This extra supply, both by its presence and the friction of the swiftly moving currents, produces heat. The pressure of the distended vessels upon the nerves frets them, and produces pain. The swelling stretches the walls of the blood vessels, and the serum or lymph oozes through. The four characteristics of an inflammation are redness, heat, pain, and swelling. ”

“ We are ready to admit, and we dare hope, that few will refuse to do so, that inflammation, strictly speaking, will occasion such an effect; yet, it often happens, that effusion will occur in cases, where no inflammation can be detected. In such instances, the vessels are evidently in a state of increased excitement; or in other words, in a state of irritation, but not of inflammation, which always implies congestion. This latter morbid condition, may supervene on the irritation, and occasion a suppression of the serous effusion, and the formation of coagulable lymph or pus. ”

“ If we reflect a little upon the innumerable varieties of the causes which can alter the organic sensibility of the capillary system, it will be easy to understand of what infinite varieties inflammation is susceptible, from the momentary blush that comes and goes in the cheeks, to the most serious phlegmon and erysipelas. We might make a scale of the degrees of inflammation. ”

“ We ought, upon this principle, which has been formerly mentioned, to endeavour, in almost every instance, to bring the sides of the wound together, if an wound has been the exciting cause of inflammation, by which we shall much more readily prevent or overcome the inflammatory action ”

“ Every internal inflammation soon affects the whole system, accompanied with considerable fever, and that fever and degree of it is easily ascertained by the heat of the breath, and the mouth, and the base of the horn, by the redness of the eye, hardness of the pulse and the loss of appetite. When Inflammation seizes any important organ, as the brain, lungs, bowels, kidneys, udder, &c., bleeding is to be immediately had recourse to, after bleeding, a purging drink is to [6] be administered, sometimes it is necessary to insert a seton in the dew lap. ”

“ The first indicates inflammation of the muscular substance in its present state of activity; the second, an irreparable disorganization of the muscular substance left by inflammation, when it has been unarrested in its earliest stages. The first is found when death takes place in a few days after the accession of the disease; the second, when the patient survives the first attack, and dies at a remoter period.
The inflammation, which produces softening and attenuation of the muscular structure, is, I believe, always of an acute kind. ”

“ We are then chiefly to search after, and extract foreign bodies, when we apprehend that their removal may permit the inflammation to be resolved, and adhesion to take place, and when we expect that their presence will excite a greater action than our endeavours to extract them will do. ”

“ The remedies which we employ, with the intention of abating and removing the inflammatory action, are either general or topical.
General remedies are perhaps only useful, or have only a superiority over topical ones, when a general disease, or fever, accompanies the local inflammation. Topical ones are only to be trusted to alone, when the disease is entirely local. ”

“ Sometimes the inflammation is so very great, as to choak up both the passage of respiration, as well as that of deglutition; so that the poor afflicted patient can neither breathe, nor swallow; and is not only liable to be suffocated, but even starved to death, besides the danger from the malignant inflammation. ”

“ In other cases, however, a remarkable tendency is developed to the progressive spreading of the inflammation from one point or surface of the body to another, the parts first affected paling as the disease passes on to involve those in the vicinity, or being yet deeply involved while the process of peripheral extension is in progress. ”

“ When these changes take place rapidly the inflammation is said to be acute, and chronic when they take place slowly. Chronic inflammation is more complex than is the acute, and there is more variation in the single conditions. The chronicity may be due to a number of conditions, as the persistence of a cause, or to incompleteness of repair which renders the part once affected more vulnerable, to such a degree even that the ordinary conditions to which it is subjected become injurious. ”

“ The exudation in acute inflammation, if recovery takes place, is rapidly removed from the place of its origin, while in the chronic variety it tends to become a part of the region in which it lies, or, if removed, slowly disappears, and may be constantly replaced. Acute inflammations may become chronic, and the chronic variety is liable to acute exacerbations. ”

“ With the single exception immediately to be stated, the severest cases are those in which, together with a severe primary affection of the nervous system, this inflammatory action is in the greatest degree of intensity, and is seated in the greatest number of organs; and they are the most severe, not only on account of the severity of the primary affection of the nervous system, but also because it is in them that the inflammation is the most intense, and because that inflammation attacks the system at one and the same time in the greatest number of points. ”

“ In numerous instances it becomes a permanent constituent of the body, and, as time is usually essential for its formation, its occurrence is indicative of a chronic, rather than an acute inflammation. Certain chronic inflammations are progressive in character, the production of connective tissue being continuous, with perhaps occasional intermissions, as in the chronic interstitial inflammations of organs and tissues. ”

“ The chief characteristic is the cause, micro-organisms, which, introduced into the body, produce, through their dissemination and development, multiple growths of tissue like those resulting from persistent inflammation. As their structure corresponds with the productive results of inflammation, and their cause is analogous to the infective causes of inflammation, these morbid growths are closely allied to inflammatory disturbances. ”

“ The peculiar and primary affection of the nervous system, which is here assigned as the cause of inflammation, does not become identical with inflammation, but superadds the morbid condition of inflammation to its own ”

“ Whatever, then, operates on the surface, and prevents the progress of the inflammation, or cures the part which is already inflamed, will tend to check the extension of the disease, especially if the proper internal remedies be made use of with a view to prevent the extension of the action of descent. ”

“ The inflammation may vary in grade from simple hyperæmia, with increased irritability, to the most intense engorgement, exudation, and tumefaction of the membrane, and in activity from the most acute and rapidly-progressive to the most chronic and protracted in duration. ”

“ Before we can say that inflammation is established we may foresee that it will come: if the preceding excitement be not stopped, we know that it will as surely come as that blood will flow from a wounded blood-vessel. Because we cannot tell the precise moment when increased vascular action passes into actual inflammation, are we quietly to look on and do nothing until we have made that discovery? We know that inflammation is at hand ”

“ The biological hygienic treatment desires to moderate inflammation only, to the degree that it should lose its dangerous character, but it leaves to the body its power to remove, through the process of inflammation, alien and diseased matter, and to absorb and gradually carry away the products of inflammation through the blood current. ”

“ Spontaneous Inflammation—Diseases peculiar to Particular Countries—Injuries from Swallowing the Stones of Fruits—Extraordinary Surgical Operation—Extraordinary Cures by Burning—Illumination by Electricity—Divisibility of Matter.
Spontaneous Inflammation.—A paper on this subject, which appeared in the Repertory of Arts, vol. ii. p. 425, induced the Rev. W. Tooke to publish some remarks in vol. iii. p. 95, of that work, from which the following is an extract, respecting the spontaneous inflammation of animal and vegetable substances. ”

“ The inflammation, in this view, is the evidence of a battle being fought in our favour, and often with very long odds against us. If our phagocytes gain a complete victory, we escape the suppuration which we saw to result in the shape of the ‘festering’ finger. If, on the other hand, they sustain defeat, they will fight on, leaving their dead behind. ”

“ I have endeavored to make clear the fact that inflammation destroys normal tissues and blood-vessels, and that the newly formed tissue is cicatricial in character, that is poor in cells and vessels, with a tendency to contraction which of course lessens the bore of the gut. ”

“ A chronic inflammation may be little more than an almost continuous series of acute inflammations, with repair continuously less perfect. Chronic imflammations are a prerogative of the old as compared with the young, of the weak rather than the strong. ”

“ According to the rapidity and intensity of the process of structural changes which takes place in an inflamed tissue, inflammation is described as acute or chronic, with a vast number of intermediate forms. ”

“ Nevertheless, to prevent confusion, and the quibbling of some of the opponents of the theory of inflammation in dropsy, we are inclined to believe, that it is better to substitute the word irritation, whenever there is merely an increased secretion, and reserve the word inflammation, to designate those cases, in which there are decided marks of local excitement and congestion, attended or not with general fever. ”

“ Hence it happens, that those surfaces, which are the most exposed to such agents as exalt the sensibility, are also the most subject to local inflammation, as may be remarked in the conjunctiva and the lungs; at which time such is usually the increase of sensibility in the part, that of organic, which it was, it becomes animal, and transmits to the brain the impressions, which are made upon it.
Inflammation lasts as long as there subsists an excess of sensibility; by degrees it diminishes, the red globules cease to pass into the serous vessels and resolution takes place. ”

“ Carpenter is led to observe that "cold brings quickly to a fatal termination many maladies which it does not directly induce." Nay, the acute inflammatory attack, under such circumstances, is often enough the first intimation, to the patient, and perhaps to the physician, of the existence of organic change in the affected organ. A most common error, and, as far as I know, a universal one, is to date the real beginning of the disease from the acute inflammation, and ascribe any recognizable lingering symptoms to the acute attack having "lapsed into the chronic form;" ”

“ For example, the pain caused by an inflammation of the skin is usually described as of a burning or itching character; that of inflammation in dense tissues like periosteum or bone, or in encapsuled organs, as dull, boring, or aching. When inflammation is passing on to suppuration the pain assumes a throbbing character, and as the pus reaches the surface, or “points,” as it is called, sharp, darting, or lancinating pains are experienced. Inflammation involving a nerve-trunk may cause a boring or a tingling pain ”

“ The lymphatic glands are to be prevented from inflaming, by avoiding exposure to cold, and to the other common causes of inflammation, but especially by preventing the absorption of irritating matter, such as matter from sores, and the like. ”