GENERAL DISEASES. 



BY RUSH SHIPPEN HUIDEKOPER, M. D., Vet. 

 Editor Journal of Comparative Medicine and Veterinary Archives, Philadelphia. 



INFLAMMATION. 



Synonyms : Inflam medio, Latin, from Inflammare, to flame, to burn ; 

 Phlegmasia 6\eyjj.affia, Greek; Inflammation, French; Inflamma- 

 zione, Italian; Inflaviacion, Spanish; Entzundung, German. 



Definition. — Inflammation is a process of excessive nutrition — 

 hypernutrition— of a living tissue, by wliicli the latter may be altered 

 in its functions while retaining for an indefinite time a morbid life; 

 may be destroyed, as in abscesses, ulcers, necrosis, etc. ; or may be 

 transformed into a new tissue, as in the healing of a previousl^^ 

 injured i)art, the normal tissue in this case being replaced by a scar 

 (cicatricial tissue), or by masses of calcareous deposits (lime salts). 



ANIMAL TISSUES. 



The non-professional reader may regard tlie animal tissues, which 

 are subject to inflammation, as excessively simple structures, as sim- 

 ilar, simple, and fixed in their organization as the joists and boards 

 which frame a liouse, the bricks and iron coils of pipe whicli build 

 a furnace, or the stones and mortar which make the support of a 

 great railroad bridge. Yet while the principles of structure are thus 

 simple, for the general understanding by the student who begins 

 their study the complete appreciation of the shades of variation, 

 which differentiate one tissue from another, which define a sound ten- 

 don or ligament from a fibrous band, the result of disease filling in an 

 old lesion and tying one organ with another, is as complicated as the 

 nicest jointing of Chinese woodwork, the building of a furnace for 

 the most difficult chemical analj^sis, or tlie construction of a bridge 

 which will stand for ages and resist vtuj force or weight. 



All tissues are composed of certain fundamental and similar ele- 

 ments which are governed by the same rules of life, though they may 



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