ll'l (>N Till. V \TIMJK AND PRINCIPLE M 



ON THE 



\ Mli;i; AND I'KIXCIPLES OF TREATMENT OF 

 INFLAMMATION, 



AND THE 



ALLIED DISORDERS OF THE CIRCULATION. 



(From the LONDON MEDICAL GAZETTE, 1846-7.) 



ON no subject in the whole range of medical science 

 has more been written than on inflammation: a fact 

 sufficiently indicative both of the importance and 

 difficulty of its study. Nor can any investigations 

 yet published be said to have so far settled the 

 various questions involved in the consideration of 

 the precise nature of this disease, as to preclude 

 others from entering upon the same field of inquiry. 

 Indeed, most of the writers upon inflammation 

 seem, in some measure, to have evaded the dis- 

 cussion of the great point, as to its essential nature, 

 and have contented themselves with describing the 

 order of production of its symptoms and effects. 

 The professed definitions of it which I have met 

 with, have generally been of two kinds : either an 

 enumeration of its phenomena, varying in length 

 from the classical brevity of Celsus to a tedious 

 diffuseness which filled more than one page, or some 

 dogma which appealed rather to the faith than to the 

 reason of the inquirer. Those more rational doc- 

 trines, in which it has recently been endeavoured to 



