

XI. 



INFLAMMATION. 



HISTORICAL SKETCH. The clinical features of inflammation have been 

 well studied ever since Hippocrates's time, but the interpretations of 

 its appearances under the microscope have passed through varying phases 

 during the last forty years. The views regarding the nature of the inflam- 

 matory process have undergone changes corresponding with the advanced 

 knowledge of biological facts. Two main conceptions of this process have 

 controlled the observations made by means of the microscope viz., the 

 theories of humoral and cellular pathology. 



C. Rokitansky,* the founder of the humoral pathology, originally consid- 

 ered inflammation to be a disturbance in the vascular system, a disease of the 

 blood, whose mixture, the "krasis," gave a typical character to the nature of 

 the inflammatory process. The greatest stress was laid on the exudation, a 

 liquid coming from the blood-vessels, therefore a modified plasma of the 

 blood. The favorite experiment at that time was the production of an arti- 

 ficial inflammation in the web-membrane of the frog. This apparently showed 

 all the phenomena of inflammation. The membrane of a living frog, care- 

 fully extended over a cork ring and held in position by pins, exhibited dis- 

 tinctly and beautifully the blood-vessels and the current of the blood, marked 

 by the rushing blood-corpuscles. Upon applying an irritating agent to the 

 web, usually a drop of concentrated liquor ammoniee, striking changes 

 occurred in the current of the blood : first, an irregularity in the current, an 

 undulation ; next, a slowing, and, finally, a stoppage of the current in the 

 irritated vascular districts. This " stasis " was considered the essential phe- 

 nomenon of the inflammatory process. Simultaneously an inundation and 

 swelling of the surrounding tissue was observed, owing to the exudation. All 

 the newly appearing corpuscles, including both the inflammatory and the 

 pus corpuscles, were termed exudation corpuscles, and, in accordance with 

 the cell-theory established by Schwann, were thought to have originated 

 from the exuded plasma of the blood, in a manner termed primordial genera- 



" " Handbuch der Allgeineiiien Pathologisclien Anatomie," Wien, 1846. 



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