24 PRACTICE OF PHYSIC. 



formerly referred to the characters given of them in our Nos- 

 ology. (See Synops. Nosolog. Meth. gen. vii. sp. 1. and 2. 

 p. 260.) But I think it proper now to deliver^the characters 

 of them more fully and exactly here, as follows : 



A Phlegmon is an inflammatory affection of the skin, with a 

 swelling, rising generally to a more considerable eminence in 

 the middle of it, of a bright red colour, both the swelling and 

 colour being pretty exactly circumscribed ; the whole being : [at- 

 tended with a pain of distention, often of a stounding or throb- 

 bing kind, and frequently ending in suppuration. 



An Erythema, Rose, or St. Anthony's Fire, is an inflamma- 

 tory affection of the skin, with hardly any evident swelling ; of 

 a mixed, and not very bright red colour, readily disappearing 

 upon pressure, but quickly returning again ; the redness of no 

 regular circumscription, but spreading unequally, and continu- 

 ing almost constantly to spread upon the neighbouring part ; 

 with a pain like to that from burning ; producing blisters, some- 

 times 'of a small, sometimes of a larger size ; and always end- 

 ing in a desquamation of the scarf-skin, sometimes in gan- 

 grene. 



This subject I am not to prosecute here, as properly belong- 

 ing to surgery, the business of which I am seldom to enter up- 

 on in this work ; and I shall therefore observe only as necessary 

 here, that the difference of these appearances seems to depend 

 on the different seat of the inflammation. In the phlegmon, 

 the inflammation seems to affect especially the vessels on the 

 internal surface of the skin communicating with the lax sub- 

 jacent cellular texture ; whence a more copious effusion, and 

 that of serum convertible into pus, takes place. In the erythe- 

 ma, the inflammation seems to have its seat in the vessels on 

 the external surface of the skin, communicating with the rete 

 mucosum, which does not admit of any effusion, but what se- 

 parates the cuticle, and gives occasion to the formation of a 

 blister, while the smaller size of the vessels admits only of the 

 effusion of a thin fluid, very seldom convertible into pus. 



Besides these differences in the circumstances of these two 

 kinds of inflammation, it is probable that they also differ with 

 respect to their causes. Erythema is the effect of all kinds of 

 acrids externally applied to the skin ; and, when arising from 



