TREATMENT OF INFLAMMATION. 175 



sary for me to refer to the writings of Alison, 

 Travers, Bennett, and others. Now, in my experi- 

 ments on the kidney, I have met with fibrinous 

 coagula in the urinary passages, and in one instance 

 with a considerable quantity of coagulating lymph, 

 as the effects of what I have been content to term 

 an unnatural increase in the lateral pressure of the 

 columns of blood contained within the minute vessels 

 of that gland. I have, at the risk of appearing 

 unnecessarily tedious, repeatedly alluded to this as 

 the immediate cause of every species of effusion ; 

 others seem to prefer terming it a state of con- 

 gestion. But, however we may designate the patho- 

 logical state, the fret of fibrinous exudation occurring 

 as one of its effects destroys the value of that phe- 

 nomenon as peculiarly distinctive of inflammation. 

 As will be seen from the experiments mentioned in 

 the following part of this communication, the same 

 pathological phenomena have followed the conges- 

 tion of the renal vessels, whether that increased 

 lateral pressure of the capillary blood-columns arose 

 from venous obstruction, or from an artificially aug- 

 mented flow of blood through the renal artery. It 

 is true that the quantity of fibrine thus obtained 

 was in many instances very minute, and that in 

 several experiments it did not appear at all. But 

 this circumstance is fully explicable by the difficulty 

 of maintaining, at will, the pressure of the blood at 

 the required point, and no higher, for a sufficient 

 length of time. And one positive fact must, in 

 experiments on a question of this kind, be con- 

 sidered to counterbalance a thousand failures. I 



