THEORY OF INFLAMMATION. 59 



With facts such as these before us, we cannot refuse our 

 assent to the introduction of the suspension of function as 

 a sign indicating inflammation. 



THEORY OF INFLAMMATION. 



When we consider the paramount influence of inflam- 

 mation, we shall evince no surprise at learning that the part 

 of our subject at which we have now arrived is one that has 

 for years engrossed the attention of the medical profession. 

 The four indispensable signs of its existence — heat, redness, 

 swelling, and pain — have at all times been acknowledged: 

 plain and obvions, however, as these four facts are, and 

 simple as they appear to be in their nature, yet they have 

 collectively furnished materials for more hypotheses than any 

 one subject in the range of medical inquiry. The blood- 

 capillaries were by all admitted to be the structures prin- 

 cipally concerned in the production of these changes; but when 

 they came to explain how these were afiected, there arose a 

 difi*erence of opinion. The earlier pathologists confined 

 their views exclusively to the blood, looking upon inflam- 

 mation as the result of a vitiated state of the humours. 

 This error was no sooner exposed, than an equally undivided 

 attention was given to the blood-vessels : their action was 

 found to be considerably increased under inflammation, and 

 to the quantity of blood thrown into a part by enlarged ducts 

 was attributed the redness, heat, and pain; there still 

 being a difficulty in reconciling the swelling with this 

 theory. To surmount this obstacle, it was said, that the 

 increased action only afi'ected the vessels running to the in- 

 flamed part; that in them the blood was congested. The 

 obstruction causing the congestion, Boerhaave asserted, con- 

 sisted in some inflammations, in thickness and viscidity of 

 the blood, a condition he called lentor ; while in others he 

 found it to be owing to the larger globules of the blood 

 being impelled into vessels too small for their transmission, 

 which he designated eri'or loci. Cullen disputed this theory, 

 contending that i\\a)essels, and not the blood, were in fault. 



