Page:Restorative medicine - an Harveian annual oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on June 21, 1871 (the 210th anniversary) (IA restorativemedic00cham).pdf/27

RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. 13 which weakening influence, indeed, he ascribes the power of all other antiphlogistics whatsoever. Monographs on inflammation have not been writ- ten of late years, but morbid anatomists, chemists, physiologists, and clinical teachers, of all nations and tongues, unite in speaking of it as "a per- version of nutrition." And to each one in his own department the perversion displays itself as in the direction of incompleteness. The anato- mist sees in it the premature expulsion of new-born germinal matter, which should have budded into tissues; but which now at best becomes a deformed scar, and more usually dies off as pus. The chemist points out the defective oxygenation which causes lithate of ammonia, uric acid, or oxalates to appear in the urine, or an excess of fibrin in the blood. Inflammation is a cooling, not a kindling, of the furnace, in respect of chemical power. The physiologist discovers the swelling, redness, and heat of inflamed parts to be due to a loss of elasti- city in the smaller arteries. He regrets his in- ability at present to explain the general rise of temperature; but as that sometimes occurs after death, he does not think it an evidence of in- creased life. The practitioner at the bedside, casting about among the means at his command