On some states which resemble inflammation / [William Brown].

  • Brown, William, 1796-1887.
Date:
[1839]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some states which resemble inflammation / [William Brown]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    anxiety on the part of the medical attendant, but they do not fol¬ low the course taken by idiopathic inflammation, and they yield to remedies of no great efficacy, or, at least, to a much smaller loss of blood than such an inflammation would demand. No one would leave pneumonia to the measures which are unhesitatingly had recourse to in the local affection of fever; and hence, we must infer that the two diseases are diflferent in their'nature. I have now mentioned several forms of disease (and additional examples will perhaps suggest themselves to other members), in which there are symptoms resembling those of inflammation, but which a careful observer will be able to distinguish from them. They indicate, indeed, a different disease or stage of disease ; sometimes a merely congested state of the blood-vessels, which may easily pass into inflammation ; sometimes a state which is rather a consequence of inflammation ; sometimes a local affection entirely sui generis ; sometimes a congeries of local symptoms not arising from local disease, but symptomatic of disease in a remote part of the body. The resemblance to inflammation is sometimes so great as to perplex and agitate a young practitioner ; and the importance of a right diagnosis is so much the greater, because the treatment appropriate to inflammation is prejudicial here. The eagerness with which we bleed in all cases supposed to be inflam¬ matory, the anxiety with which this remedy is even called for by the patients, makes it the more necessary that we should commit no mistake. True it is that the ruddy complexions and robust con¬ stitutions of many of the patients, assure us that they will get no harm from the loss of blood, and that possibly it may do them good, at any rate. But these, I think, are only a small portion of the patients who apply to us under such circumstances. A large number are females of irritable and hysterical habits, men whose powers have been debilitated by a course of intemperate indul¬ gence, or half-nourished children of the poor, whose strength is deficient, instead of superabundant. To abstract blood, in any considerable extent, from such patients, will incur the risk not only of allowing the present illness to continue unsubdued, but of lead¬ ing to organic disease, of bringing on confirmed mania^ and even causing premature death. I am quite aware that the converse of this statement is equally true. Real inflammation is frequently subacute in its attack and insidious in its progress, so that the practitioner is thrown off his guard, and allows the disease to produce irremediable mischief. Many such cases there are, where organic disease has been mistaken for mere functional derangement ; where subacute inflammation of the cerebral membranes has been allowed to proceed uncheck¬ ed to fatal effusion ; where pneumonia has been imperfectly re¬ cognized, and therefore, imperfectly treated; where peritonitis has