270 ON THE EARLY STAGES OF INFLAMMATION 
operating powerfully, extinguish the life of the constituents of the animal body, 
produce by a somewhat gentler action a condition bordering upon loss of vitality, 
but quite distinct from it, in which the tissues are, for the time being, incapaci- 
tated for discharging their wonted offices, though retaining the faculty of returning 
afterwards, by virtue of their own inherent powers, to their former state of 
activity, provided the irritation have not been too severe or protracted. This 
suspension of function or temporary abolition of vital energy is the primary 
lesion in inflammatory congestion ; the blood in the vicinity of the disabled tissues 
assuming the same characters as when in contact with ordinary solid matter, 
and thus becoming unfit for transmission through the vessels ; while the return 
of the living solids to their usual active state is accompanied by a restoration 
of the vital fluid to the healthy characters which adapt it for circulation. 
CONCLUSION 
It remains to glance at the application of the principles established in the 
preceding pages to human pathology. 
The post mortem appearance which is universally admitted to indicate 
that the early stages of inflammation have occurred during life, is intense redness, 
depending essentially not upon peculiar distension of the vessels with blood, 
but upon abnormal accumulation of the red corpuscles in their minutest rami- 
fications. A beautiful example of this condition, developed idiopathically, was 
presented by the case of incipient meningitis mentioned in the Introduction, 
in which the vessels of an affected spot of pia mater were filled with a crimson 
mass of confusedly compacted corpuscles, exactly as in an area of the frog’s 
web to which mustard has been applied. The derangement of the vital fluid 
in the human subject being thus closely parallel to that which we have studied 
in the batrachian reptile, we can hardly doubt that in the former, as in the 
latter, the living solids are in a state of more or less complete suspension of 
functional activity during inflammatory congestion. This view is supported by 
the effusion of liquor sanguinis in its integrity in the more advanced stages of 
the disease in man, and by the speedy coagulation of fibrine upon inflamed 
serous surfaces, or in the interior of vessels affected with arteritis or phlebitis. 
For these circumstances, as has been before remarked, appear to indicate that 
the tissues are for the time being reduced still more towards the condition of 
ordinary solid matter. These arguments, derived from the appearances of the 
blood, are further corroborated by the immediate transition which is apt to 
occur from intense human inflammation to gangrene.! 
* The degenerations of tissue which result from inflammation, ably delineated by Mr. Paget in his 
Lectures on Surgical Pathology, are additional evidence in the same direction. 
