138 PHYSIC 



haemal elements being already highly vitalised, and some 

 of them highly organised, enter into new combinations 

 and arrangements with the local organic elements, with 

 which they find themselves in contact after their exudation, 

 through the controlling influence and formative power of 

 the sympathetic nervature, in virtue of which a continuity 

 of the traumatised histological elements and a structural 

 completeness of the affected parts is effected and main- 

 tained, thereby securing, as nearly as can be, the status 

 quo ante. 



We feel that it would be both instructive and interest- 

 ing to follow, analyse, and describe, the succeeding stages 

 in the process of evolution and involution involved in 

 inflammation, but suffice it to say that this has already 

 been over and over again most clearly and successfully 

 accomplished, and that we only here insist on the primary 

 and essential instrumentality of nervine influence in the 

 incidence and course of all inflammatory as well as some, 

 and, it may be, all other diseased conditions. We shall, 

 therefore, in short and general terms, describe the succeed- 

 ing stages in the extra-vascular phenomena of inflammation, 

 and the re-attainment by the affected part, or parts, of 

 the status quo ante, as a series of health and tissue restora- 

 tive nervine operations, comprising the breaking down and 

 rebuilding into permanent organic form of the extra- 

 vasated materials, and the absorption and removal of the 

 unused residuum, along with all the absolutely destroyed 

 tissue elements resulting from the traumatic or morbid 

 blood invasion of the tissue matrix. This manner of 

 termination constitutes what may be called resolution by 

 cellulitis, in which the peri-vascular cellular tissues, or what 

 may be called sympathetic connective tissue cells, are the 

 active agents in the conversion of the effused blood con- 

 stituents into cicatricial tissue, or normal texture, by virtue 

 of the all-controlling formative powers inherent in that 

 part of the nervous system, through its self-contained 

 ability to effect new growth and repair injured tissues by 

 cell proliferation and connective fibre extension. 



Should the inflammatory process here described termi- 

 nate, instead of by resolution, in suppuration, ulceration, 

 or gangrene, we but observe a continuation and accentua- 



