Inflammation regarded as a physiological reaction to an infecting lesion : the oration of the Hunterian Society, delivered at the London Institution, February 11th, 1885 / by F. Charlewood Turner.

Turner, Francis Charlewood, 1843-1900.

Date:: 1885

Credit: Inflammation regarded as a physiological reaction to an infecting lesion : the oration of the Hunterian Society, delivered at the London Institution, February 11th, 1885 / by F. Charlewood Turner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$^•erms only—and unattended by tlieir septic products, wbicli when absorbed will be fortliwith diffused through :]he blood. And considering the great resistance of the tissues to direct atmospheric contamination, and to more virulent forms of inoculation, it might be anticipated that micro- cocci reaching the tissues indirectly through the blood, should be able to develop with phlogogenic activity only under most exceptional conditions of extensive damage and destruction of the tissue from severe and repeated injury. And it is in this way, I think, rather than in a supposed freedom of the tissues from the presence of these organisms, that the remarkable immunity of simple fractures and of injuries to the subcutaneous tissues from inflammatory complications, is to be explained. And the explanation of the exceptional occurrence of ■suppuration about simple fractures in robust and healthy ■subjects, is, I think, to be found in the especially favor- able conditions for the development of the micrococci presented in such cases, rather than in an effect of the llocal lesion on the general nutritive state permitting t'their entrance into the body. That the occasional occurrence of suppuration about • simple fractures is due to the severity and repetition of the injury inflicted, and not to any mycotic infection of the damaged part of a degree at all comparable with that of compound fractures by particles of dust, was shown in a remarkable case on which I made an autopsy about twelve months ago. The case was that of a robust and healthy man, aged tAventy-five, Avho was admitted into the London Hospital in an unconscious state from concussion of the brain, received with other$