On the pathology and treatment of acute rheumatism : being the Lumleian lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in 1853 / by James Alderson.

  • Alderson, James, 1795-1882.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the pathology and treatment of acute rheumatism : being the Lumleian lectures delivered before the Royal College of Physicians in 1853 / by James Alderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    pression is included in tlie term. It is meant to imply, cold produced by some sudden changes in the atmosphere, as, I believe, through electrical causes. Although casual opportunities occur for the in- fluence of sudden vicissitudes of temperature, es- pecially when, as just observed, following after exposure to a carbonized atmosphere, yet the vast number of inflammatory attacks take place in certain peculiar atmospheric conditions when the atmosphere may be considered in a chemically-excited state, or, in other words, when the ozone of Scli5nbein is present. It is obvious that oxygen, in this state, would act with increased power for the over-production of fibrine. Whether we may attribute all inflamma- tory change on the blood by the reception of the excess of oxygen to this chemicaUy-excited state of the atmosphere is at present hypothetical; but the evidence, which is increasing daily before us, dis- poses me strongly to believe, that in tliis consists the exciting cause of the over-fibrinated state of the blood which constitutes inflammation. Such reference to atmospheric condition, together with this mode of its influence on the system, sug- gests a solution of the difficult question of the nature of epidemic disease. We may view the fibrine in this inflammatory state as having received a forced development into a more advanced stage towards organization; or, in other words, an approach to a more exalted state of