LOCAL SYMPTOMS. 23 



according to some observers, it seems doubtful whether the 

 heat of the inflamed part is even higher than that of the other 

 parts of the body. The greatest rise in the temperature is found 

 where the inflamed part is far removed from the centre of cir- 

 culation, and where the natural temperature is several degrees 

 below that of the blood at the heart, as in the feet of our 

 patients; and it is also found that in parts remote from the 

 centre of circulation the heat is most distressing. 



The sense of heat which the patient experiences must be partly- 

 due to the increased sensibility of the inflamed part, and also to 

 the fact that the functions of the sensory nerves are increased 

 and perverted. The greatest degree of heat has been found to 

 exist in rinderpest, and this was not due to any inflammation 

 of the part, but to the rapidity of the textural changes that 

 took place in that plague. In this disease the highest record 

 made by me was 109°. The highest temperature recorded by 

 writers on human medicine is 110f°; this was in tetanus, which 

 is not an inflammatory disease. 



Some late experiments upon the production of increased heat 

 in a part inflamed may be interesting to the reader. 



The experiments of Mr. Simon, corroborated by those of M. 

 0. Weber, go to prove that inflammation does actually cause 

 a local production of heat, for the application of a thermo- 

 electric needle showed {1st.) that the blood passing to an in- 

 flamed part is less warm than that part itself; {2d.) that the 

 venous blood returning from an inflamed part is warmer than 

 the arterial blood supplying it, though less warm than the focus 

 of inflammation; and {3d.) that the V^ous blood returning 

 from an inflamed limb is warmer than the corresponding current 

 on the opposite side of the body. 



The subject has been taken up by MM. Jacobson and Bern- 

 hardt; and the results of their investigations are opposed to the 

 above, and corroborative of those of Hunter. They excited pleurisy 

 of one side, or general inflammation of the peritoneal cavity in 

 rabbits, by injecting dilute acetic acid or caustic ammonia ; and 

 when inflammation was established, they compared the tem- 

 perature of the inflamed serous sacs with that of others, or 

 with the blood in the right or left ventricles of the heart. In 

 a preliminary set of experiments they discovered that great 

 exactness was obtainable in ascertaining the temperature of 



