Medicine and surgery one inductive science, being an attempt to improve its study and practice, on a plan in closer alliance with inductive philosophy, and offering, as first fruits, the law of inflammation ... the whole being the introduction and first part of a system of surgery / By George Macilwain.

George Macilwain

Date:: 1838

Credit: Medicine and surgery one inductive science, being an attempt to improve its study and practice, on a plan in closer alliance with inductive philosophy, and offering, as first fruits, the law of inflammation ... the whole being the introduction and first part of a system of surgery / By George Macilwain. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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4] practice; and I was first induced to do so, from the result of cases such as I have alluded to. A patient having presented himself, under the cireumstances which I mentioned, finding himself re- lieved from the inflammation, relinquishes his attendance, and does not come again for perhaps two or three weeks; when it is found that the protrusion of the iris is much diminished, and in all re- spects doing, not only as well, but much better, than when treated in what was at that time the usual mode, and which still continues to be the practice of many surgeons; Mr. Lawrence, no doubt, aware of this, has cited Demours’ authority, as supporting the better practice. In fact, as will hereafter be explained to you, the business of the surgeon is to subdue the inflammation ; the pro- lapsed iris is managed entirely by Nature. Our knowledge of the nature and treatment of inflammation itself, may be improved by the due cultivation of accidental opportunity, in the same manner. Very recently, a woman applied at the dispensary, with a very threatening inflammation of the eye, chiefly affecting the sclerotica and iris; her catamenia were deficient, and there was much pain in the head. All this seemed to point very decidedly, according to received notions, to the abstraction of blood ; but as the woman’s general powers appeared to be, from some cause or other, much enfeebled, I did not venture on blood-letting, farther than by re- commending its local employment by cupping or leeches. She, however, refused to submit to either: I therefore embraced the opportunity of treating her, with a reference to what might be supposed to be the causes (I mean the remote causes) of the in- flammation, and the inflammation was successfully subdued with- out any of the means usually employed in such a case, except the application of belladonna, to prevent, as far as keeping it in a constant state of dilatation could do, the occlusion and adhesion of the pupil (the hole or window through which light is admitted to the eye) by coagulable lymph. You are not to suppose that the value of the information elicited from this case, or others of a simi- lar nature, is confined to the successful treatment of each particular case; on the contrary, such cases unfold new views with regard to the real causes of inflammation, in a manner hereafter to be ex- plained to you. But to return. If our enquiries, however closely conducted, fail of absolute demonstration, it is the more necessary that we should be close in our reasonings as to probability. Let me here again refer you to cases.

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