170 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



by the want of a continuous sufficiently elevated temperature, and 

 fatally injured by direct exposure to cold. 



It now remains to show that organs undergoing pathological evo- 

 lution (conservative structural modification) are affected exactly in 

 the same manner by exposure to cold. Speaking, first, theoretically, 

 we find organs thus circumstanced are the seat of an exalted rate of 

 tissue-transformation, of a change additional to that which belongs 

 to the ordinary process of waste and repair, and therefore we should 

 a 2>}'iori exjDCct to find in them the same liability to inflammation, on 

 exposure, as was observed in organs being rapidly developed jDhysio- 

 logically. Speaking practically, we find, a fortiori^ that this is actu- 

 ally the case. What is more common, with a patient who is the subject 

 of some chronic organic disease, than to be suddenly cut ofl" by the 

 occurrence of acute inflammation in the afiected organ after exposure 

 to cold ? Every medical practitioner can answer. In remarking upon 

 the influence of cold as a cause of mortality. Dr. Carpenter, in his 

 " Human Physiology," * refers to the Report of the Registrar-General 

 for March, 1855, in which it appears that the rate of mortality, not 

 only in infants and aged persons, but also in those afiected with 

 chronic disease, increases during the winter months, and diminishes 

 in summer. The deaths in many instances (in old persons) were due 

 to pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma, and various chronic diseases ; so 

 that Di\ Carpenter is led to observe that " cold brings quickly to a 

 fatal termination many maladies which it does not directly induce." 

 Nay, the acute inflammatory attack, imder such circumstances, is often 

 enough tlie first intimation, to the patient, and perhaps to the physi- 

 cian, of the existence of organic change in the afiected organ. A most 

 common error, and, as far as I know, a universal one, is to date the 

 real beginning of the disease from the acute inflammation, and as- 

 cribe any recognizable lingering symptoms to the acute attack having 

 " lapsed into the chronic form ; " when, in fact, the slow, chronic 

 changes of structure were present only in their naturally-designed 

 latent form,* long before, and were only made manifest to the patient 

 by the disturbing action of cold. 



As we have seen that, in organisms undergoing physiological de- 

 velopment, those organs are most liable to be attacked with inflam- 

 mation after exposure, whose rate of growth happens to be at the time 

 most rapid, so in after-life it is not all the organs in the body that are 

 liable to inflame after exposure, but only those in which pathological 

 evolution is taking place. And this explains why it is, when several 

 persons have been equally exposed, that one suflers from acute pneu- 

 monia, another from acute nephritis (kidney-inflammation), another 

 from acute arthritis (joint-inflammation), while some altogether escape 



' American edition of 1856, p. 864. 



" That processes of patliological development can be latent, like pbysiological evolu- 

 tion, will be shown hereafter. 



