A view of the prevailing theories of inflammation : submitted to the consideration of the Honourable Robert Smith, provost, and the regents of the University of Maryland / by Philip R. Edelen, of St. Mary's County, Maryland ; honorary member of the Baltimore Medical Society.

  • Edelen, Philip R.
Date:
1815
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A view of the prevailing theories of inflammation : submitted to the consideration of the Honourable Robert Smith, provost, and the regents of the University of Maryland / by Philip R. Edelen, of St. Mary's County, Maryland ; honorary member of the Baltimore Medical Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    influx of blood into a part. The second they called simple obstruction. The complete doctrine of fluxions and congestion. A subdivision was then established into varieties, receiving specific names from the supposed causes affecting their diversity of sensible signs. Sup- posing the two first to consist in a change effected by the pure blood alone, the latter they considered the conse- quence of foreign admixture with the blood, such as bile, phlegm, &c. And upon these principles they at- tempted the illustration of many modifications of inflam- mation. To a differently vitiated state of the blood were ascribed (Edema, Erisipelas, Schirrus, &c. It will not be necessary to follow them in those minute and capricious details, which establish any thing rather than fact or probability. The principal proselytes to this doctrine of inflamma- tion, were Etius, Paulus iEgineta, Oribasius, Fernelius- and Sennertus. I will in this place, recur for a moment, to a subject noticed in the first stage of enquiry into the early doc- trines 3f inflammation:, to wit, that I believed we should find the old writers in ; session of some important and just grounds of conclusion on this head, as to fact, though they had arrived at them by tortuous and obscure roads, in regard to their philosophy. Or the principles by which they attempted to illustrate their mode of produc- tion. As far as we have, advanced, one particular halt or feature appears to have served as a land-mark to every traveller who has imprinted his footsteps upon this road of hoped for discovery. The evident increase of contained fluid; the sensible signs of unusual flux of blood into an inflamed part has arrested the attention of every adventurer, and found a distinguished place in every chart of observation. It has been already re- marked that the moderns assented to their accuracy in this particular. The combatants on the theatre of in- flammation now leave uncontested this solitary point, contented with evincing their dexterity in unfolding its law of universal production. That the old authors were also right in another particular, viz. the impeded cur- rent through the part, I would infer from the very ad- mission here adduced. For I think we know enough of 3