A treatise on symptomatic fevers ; including inflammations, hemorrhagies, and mucous discharges / by A. P. Wilson Philip.

  • Philip, Alexander Philip Wilson, 1770-1847.
Date:
1820
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on symptomatic fevers ; including inflammations, hemorrhagies, and mucous discharges / by A. P. Wilson Philip. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    43/476 (page 27)
    The greater the general debility, the greater, it is evi- dent, must be the partial debility before inflammation can take place, because, however debilitated the vessels of any part may be, inflammation will not supervene if the vis a ter go is debilitated in the same proportion; hence in very debilitated states of body inflammation soon runs to gan- grene, as happens in the inflammations so readily excited in typhus, &c. Nay, in cases of extreme debility an injured part runs to gangrene almost without any symptom of in- flammation, the vis a tergo being too feeble to distend the vessels, however much debilitated. Of the Terminations of Inflammation. The most common terminations of inflammation are, resolution, suppuration, and gangrene. Of the first there is little to be added to what has been said. We have seen in the foregoing experiments that, in proportion as we succeed in exciting the capillaries of an in- flamed part, we relieve the inflammation. When an in- flammation is cured by resolution, that is, without the destruction of any of the parts it occupies, the vis a tergo has succeeded in restoring the proper action of the capilla- ries. Resolution is often promoted by an effusion from the inflamed vessels; for when the vessels are so much debilitated by distention, that the only effect of the vis a tergo is far- ther to distend them, there is no hope of exciting them to action without diminishing the volume of their contents. Sometimes a vessel gives way, and the inflammation termi- nates by hemorrhagy: when this does not happen, the fluid discharged is often serum, or coagulable lymph. If the in- flammation has its seat in a secreting organ, its secretion is generally increased, and sometimes, particularly on secreting surfaces, the fluid discharged we shall find is a true pus, for it will appear that the formation of pus is not always attend- ed with a destruction of parts. Whether the termination by a secretion of pus*, the texture of the parts remaining en- tire, deserves the name of suppuration or resolution, it is of little consequence to inquire. It belongs to the latter ac- cording to the sense in which I use the terms. * Wc shall presently have occasion to consider the properties of this fluid.