■??3 3 
Missouri Botanical Garden 
Seorge Engelmann Papers 
376 Editorial . 
doubt, but that, as with everything else, depends upon the particular, con¬ 
ditions, abstractedly; they no more contain vital power than does water 
or air.” We must here protest against the dignified appellation of “ stuf¬ 
fing” being applied to a course which in hands not rash, but judicious, 
is the means with which not only the flickering flames of life are often¬ 
times sustained, but through which the most violent inflammations are 
enabled to reach a favorable termination. We are fully aware that a man 
can be killed by beef tea as readily almost as he can be drowned with 
water, and although we do not claim that beef tea contains, “abstract¬ 
edly,” any vital power, yet we do positively assert, with proper qualifica¬ 
tions, that beef tea assimilated becomes blood , and blood is necessary for 
the performance of the functions or manifestations of human life , and 
that the resolution of all inflammations is through an increased afflux of 
healthy blood to the inflamed parts. We entirely reject the old vascular 
theory of inflammation, believing as we do, that hyperaemia is always a 
consequence, and never a, cause of inflammation. In an inflamed pleura, 
lung, brain or liver, we can only hope 1 to cure the disease by not inter¬ 
fering with the very congestions which by an inevitable vis a fronte ar^ 
produced in the parts and which, in former days, practitioners sought to 
prevent. They did not recognize'the fact that the-debris and conse- 
nnp nrffi — 1 —g— » — ^W xpsnlf of a Tirimarv irrita tion in the 
