170 ON THE NATURE AND PRINCIPLES OF 



at the length which its importance merits, is, on the 

 present occasion, clearly impossible, inasmuch as 

 it would involve the study of numerous difficult and 

 complicated points connected with the pathology of 

 dropsy, haemorrhage, and the host of diseases origin- 

 ating in the exudation of coagulating lymph. I 

 must, therefore, restrict myself to an attempt at 

 demonstrating the dependence of these effects on the 

 co-existing disorder of the circulation. The first 

 point to be established is, the identity of the primary 

 effects of inflammation, with those resulting from an 

 unnaturally increased lateral pressure of the blood 

 contained in the minute vessels of a part. And for 

 this purpose it is only necessary to compare the phe- 

 nomena just mentioned as constituting the immediate 

 effects of the morbid condition designated by that 

 word, with the results obtained in my experiments on 

 the kidney, as described in the various tables. It 

 must, in the next place, be shown that a tendency 

 to a morbid increase in the lateral pressure of the 

 blood contained in the affected part exists in every 

 case of inflammation. And this tendency to an un- 

 natural distribution of the blood's pressure in the 

 capillaries, I have, in a preceding passage of this 

 section, proved to be a necessary and inevitable con- 

 sequence of that obstruction to the flow of blood 

 through those vessels, which is universally recognised 

 as an invariable accompaniment of the disease. This 

 is, in fact, a self-evident proposition, if the existence 

 of the local obstruction be admitted. It must there- 

 fore follow that the primary effects of inflammation, 

 being identical with those produced by the uunulunil 



