TREATMENT OF INFLAMMATION. 163 



the pathological condition ordinarily understood by 

 the term inflammation, it must then remain for 

 others to adduce reasons why that morbidly in- 

 creased lateral pressure of the blood detained in the 

 affected part should not be considered as identical 

 with, and in itself the essence of, the disease so long 

 designated by that ill-chosen word. 



It has just now been remarked, that the existence 

 of an obstruction to the blood's passage through the 

 vessels of an inflamed part necessarily implies a 

 morbid increase in the lateral pressure of the fluid 

 columns thus detained. And as all modern patho- 

 logists more or less explicitly recognise the tendency 

 of the causes of inflammation to induce, directly or 

 indirectly, such an obstruction, I am, by this ad- 

 mission, spared the necessity of advancing any 

 lengthened arguments in order to show that the 

 action of those causes on the circulation of the part 

 is such as to be inevitably followed by the peculiar 

 physical disorder of the blood which I presume to 

 constitute the essence of inflammation. So far, 

 then, as my general proposition is concerned, any 

 minute discussion of this point would be useless ; 

 but as a too exclusive attention to microscopical 

 phenomena seems to me to have placed the mode of 

 action of the exciting causes of this disease in an 

 unnecessary amount of obscurity, a few remarks, 

 having for their object the assignment of a fair and 

 proper value to these observations, may not be 

 altogether useless. 



It must, then, in the first place, be remembered, 

 that the disordered circulation observed in these 



M 2 



