Reflections on the nature of inflammation, and its alleged consequences / by David Badham.

  • Charles David Badham
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reflections on the nature of inflammation, and its alleged consequences / by David Badham. 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.

    13/74 (page 7)
    For if* it be impossible to refer all the supposed results of inflammation to that one action, which inflammation must necessarily be, (even though the word be taken to express a new^ that is, a morbid' action imposed on the part,) it will be not less so, to refer any of these results at all to inflammation, if, as I think, it is only an aug- mented natural action of a part. But let us, with Mr. Laurence, consider it as a vital action altered in mode; will this obviate the difficulty of tracing morbid produc- tions, or other pathological changes to this source? and can any conceivable alteration in the mode of vital action become the contingent efficient, as some would make it, of every possible disorganization of tissue ? now, to enter on this subject somewhat in de- tail, let us first inquire whether even suppuration, the most familiar of all changes, can claim to be a direct consequence of inflammation, and not rather the result of some added and peculiar mode of action, which may either be associated with the inflammatory one, or operate independently of it. As the statements employed by writers on this subject are not correct, the inductions derived are necessarily faulty. When, for instance. Hunter, Laurence, and other pathologists, whose names contribute to the re- ception of their opinions, tell us that inflammation leads to the formation of pus, in consequence of being carried so A?^^that the state of parts, on which such inflammation has been exercised, is destroyed, and so, that these parts lose the inflammatory action, and acquire another which fits them for producing matter, it is surely reasonable to inquire how, if this explanation be just, the suppurative process should so often fail to occur in many intense cases of highly inflammatory diseases ; how it happens that the most confirmed inflammations, seated even in the cellular membrane, (that tissue in which most dis- organizations appear to commence, and which, above all others, most readily inclines to the suppurative action,) should ever fail to terminate in this way, which that they do, the experience of many, besides l)u])uyt-