GENERAL DISEASES. 



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

 Editor Journal of Comparative Medicine and yeierinarj/ Archives, J:'hUadel2)hia. 



INFLAMMATION. 



Synonyms : Infammatio, Latin, from Inflammare, to flame, to bnrn ; 

 Phlegmasia OhyiJ-aala, Greek j Infiammation, 'Pv^nch -, Injianimazione^ 

 Italian ; Injlaniacion, Spanish ; Entzundung, German. 



Defmition. — Inflammation is a process of excessive nutrition — hyper- 

 nutrition — of a living tissue, by which 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 trans- 

 formed into a new tissue, as in the healing of a previously injured part, 

 the normal tissue in this case being rei)laced by a scar (cicatricial 

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



ANIMAL TISSUES. 



The non-professional reader may regard the animal tissues, which are 

 subject to inflammation, as excessively simple structures, as similar, 

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

 frame a house, the bricks and iron coils of pipe which 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 com- 

 plete appreciation of the shades of variation, which differentiate one 

 tissue from another, which define a sound tendon 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 

 analysis, or the construction of a bridge which will stand for ages and 

 resist any force or weight. 



All tissues are composed of certain fundamental and similar elements 

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

 at first glance to be widely different. These are : (a) amorphous sub- 

 stances ; {b) fibers j (c) cells. 



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