An inquiry concerning that disturbed state of the vital functions usually denominated constitutional irritation / by Benjamin Travers.

  • Travers, Benjamin, 1783-1858.
Date:
1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry concerning that disturbed state of the vital functions usually denominated constitutional irritation / by Benjamin Travers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    48/464 (page 28)
    ON THE EFFECTS OF LOCAL INJURY ON THE CONSTITUTION. Irritation is the name given to that state which is produced by an extraordinary excitement of the irritabihty either of a part or of the system : irritation is, therefore, local or constitutional. The phenomena of irritation are chiefly displayed in the nervous system, and it is thus distinguished pathologically from inflannnation, which belongs to the vascular. Their relation is as intimate as that of these systems, of the extraordinary actions of which they are the results. As the causes and degrees of excitement are various, so are the signs and modes of irritation. Inflammation has been sometimes considered a healthy, because a healing action ; this, though not a strictly logical, is an intelligible phraseology. In the same sense, the minor degrees of irritation also frequently serve a salutary purpose, and conduce to the preser- vation of the system. I object to the term irri- tative fever, as synonymous with irritation, be- cause irritation and fever are, in their nature, as distinct as irritation and inflammation j although their reciprocal affinities are as intimate and com- plicated as those of the nervous and vascular systems.