Treatise on inflammation as a process of anormal nutrition / by John Hughes Bennett.

Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Treatise on inflammation as a process of anormal nutrition / by John Hughes Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    in producing the various results of inflammation, from the trans- formations of the exudation. It may be thought by some that this doctrine contains nothing new,* that many authors have said the same thing; that Andral, Lobstein, and numerous others in their works on pathology, have distinctly spoken of increased and diminished nutrition ; and that the term morbid growths, as applied to tumours, is a sufficient proof of this. No doubt the idea of a morbid nutrition has oc- curred to writers on pathology, yet how have they applied such ideas to the phenomena of inflammation ? So far from their hav- ing conceived purulent matter to be connected with this process, they supposed it to be secreted from the blood, in some unknown way, in order to be removed from the system. That is to say, they classified pus with the bile, urine, milk, and sweat, fluids secreted by glands to be excreted from the body. They had no idea that purulent matter was the result of an ac- tive process of nutrition, formed and developed in exuded blood- plasma as from a blastema. Even an authority so late as Gerber describes the pus corpuscle as being formed by the breaking up of the exudation cell, and Travers speaks of lymph being the secreting organ of purulent matter. *f* No one has clearly distinguished the difference between the cells found in pleuritic lymph and those of purulent matter, although the former have been accurately figured by Gulliver and Yogel. Again, in- flammatory softening was confounded with that lesion which is the result of maceration, and no means existed of distinguishing one from the other. The identity between exudation corpuscles and the granular bodies of the colostrum was not known.]; In short, it was utterly impossible that, before the doctrine of growth by cells, they could have formed the most remote conception of the manner in which these morbid appearances were produced. Even the steps of healthy nutrition were unknown ; how, then, could they explain the morbid phenomena ? Their hypothesis, how- ever, remained, and as so often occurs in the history of science, what at one period was the merest hypothesis, and only the off- spring of a luxuriant imagination, becomes confirmed by observa- tion, and, after a time, received as established truth. I shall be satisfied if, in the foregoing essay, the mode in which this anormal nutrition takes place has been clearly shown, and the various phe- nomena of inflammation satisfactorily demonstrated to be expli- cable according to the present state of science. It may further be objected, that the term anormal nutrition, if * My first paper on this subject was read to the Medico-Chirurgical Society of Edinburgh, November 1842, and an abstract of it was published in Cormack s our nal for December following. It is referred to by Henlc in his Report, p. 1. • f On Inflammation, p. 122. J See Wagner by Willis, p. 42J.