On the process of inflammation / by J. Burdon Sanderson.

  • Burdon-Sanderson, John Scott, 1828-1905.
Date:
[1871?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the process of inflammation / by J. Burdon Sanderson. 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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    years no research of any importance relating to the questions which will occupy us in the following pages has appeared in this country. The fact that we have to submit to receive instruction at the hands of German pathologists, instead of meeting them on equal terms, unwelcome as it is, is very easy to account for. In the present position of pathology, the methods which in times past have been employed with such signal success in this country are exhausted. Although it would be a great mistake to say that all that can be learnt by the rough investigations which can be made in the post- mortem theatre is already known, yet it cannot be doubted that for some years past every important advance in the science of disease has been accomplished, not by the collection of isolated observations, but by the same methods of systematic experimental research which are employed in physics and chemistry. The Pathological Institutes of Vienna and Berlin have no counterparts in Great Britain. The want of them is not only disadvantageous but fatal to progress—partly because they are necessary for the effectual carrying out of experimental inquiries, partly because, without them, that education in the methods of exact research by which alone a real pathologist can be produced is impossible. Introduction. By the c process of inflammation,’ I understand the succession of changes which occurs in a living tissue when it is injured, provided that the injury is not of such degree as at once to destroy its structure and vitality. With reference to their origin, all inflammations may be comprised in two classes—extrinsic and intrinsic. Of these two terms, the former is applicable to all those cases in which an injury, either sustained by the affected part or inflicted elsewhere, is the obvious cause of the morbid process; the latter to those inflammations which, from the concealment of their cause, are commonly called idiopathic. If, however, we desire to speak accurately, we must discard this word altogether; for there is no case in which it can be reason- ably doubted that an injury must have preceded the earliest sign of local disorder, however little we may know either of the nature of the agent or of the mode of its action. We might advantageously substitute for idiopathic either of the words intrinsic or secondary ; but inasmuch as there is no channel ■ ■K.y -.s'