TREATMENT OF INFLAMMATION. 129 



chaotic mixture to something like the harmony and 

 simplicity of truth. 



I have now endeavoured to show that all these 

 experiments, though most useful and valuable so far 

 as they extend, nevertheless fail to impress the mind 

 with any satisfactory and definite opinion as to the 

 nature of the particular pathological condition essen- 

 tially constituting inflammation. In order to attain 

 that knowledge, additional facts are required, which 

 shall exhibit in a clearer light than has yet been 

 accomplished the operation of each of the two great 

 causes of disordered circulation. And it is only by 

 the aid of a body of experiments, undertaken for 

 that object, and tolerably conclusive in their results, 

 that I can indulge in the hope of being enabled to 

 advance the settlement of this long-agitated question. 



The great confusion which now surrounds the 

 subject of inflammation, has apparently arisen, not 

 more from its intrinsic difficulties than from the 

 clumsy, ill-arranged, and disorderly manner in which 

 its study has been conducted. Instead of resolving 

 into separate questions the numerous considerations 

 which spring from an observation of its attendant 

 phenomena, and then examining each singly, we find 

 writers losing themselves, and bewildering their 

 readers, by attempting to grasp, and master at once, 

 a host of problems, among which are some of the 

 most important, the most extensive, and the most 

 difficult in the whole science of life. Thus, in most 

 treatises on the pathology of this disease, we find 

 heaped together in one confused mass, dissertations 

 and conjectures of various length, according to the 



K 



