TREATMENT OF INFLAMMATION. 219 



Certain peculiar states of the constitution may more- 

 over give rise to symptoms very closely resembling 

 those of acute inflammation. In persons of a debili- 

 tated habit, in whom there exists at the same time 

 great irritability of the nervous system a combina- 

 tion of frequent occurrence in women and children 

 there may often be observed a tendency to morbid 

 excitement of the nerves of sensation, very similar 

 to that described by Dr. Hall and others, as one of 

 the occasional effects of loss of blood. But of all 

 the forms of pseudo-inflammatory disease, that simu- 

 lation of peritonitis occasionally met with in the 

 puerperal state is the most perplexing. Every 

 symptom of inflammation may then be present; 

 there may be a considerable degree of fever, quick- 

 ness, and some hardness of the pulse, with intense 

 pain (not confined merely to the skin covering the 

 peritoneum), and the disease will nevertheless often 

 rapidly vanish under the use of fomentations, alter- 

 atives, and moderate purgation. The task of deter- 

 mining the inflammatory or non-inflammatory nature 

 of affections presenting the most prominent symptoms 

 of that disease, is therefore occasionally one of the 

 greatest difficulty. And an error on this point, 

 whether leading to the reduction of a system already 

 too much enfeebled, or to the toleration, if not the 

 active encouragement, of acute inflammatory disease, 

 has doubtless often been productive of very lament- 

 able consequences. 



The necessity of distinguishing between chronic 

 inflammation and other lingering internal ailments 

 is less urgent than when the disease assumes a more 



