A biennial retrospect of medicine, surgery, and their allied sciences, for 1869-70 / edited by H. Power [and others] for the New Sydenham Society.

Date:: 1871

Credit: A biennial retrospect of medicine, surgery, and their allied sciences, for 1869-70 / edited by H. Power [and others] for the New Sydenham Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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$REPORT ON PRACTICAL MEDICINE. BY A. B. SHEPHERD, M.A., M.B., M.R.C.P. a. Diseases oe the General System. Inflammation and Suppuration. The years i86p-7o have seen no diminished interest in the question regarding the origin of pus-cells; and while \irchows theory, in which the connective-tissue corpuscle is pathologically all in all, has been hut indirectly challenged, experiments have been multiplied in support of Cohnheim’s view, according to which the process of inflammation is characterised by the passage ot the white cells through the vessel-walls, as well as on the side of the older (P) school, which asserts that the cellular elements, said to be extravasated, originate in an amorphous blastema; the greatest champion, probably, of the latter doctrine at the present time being M. Robin. Cohnheim (“Tleber das Yerhalten der fixen Bindegewebskorperchen bei der Entztindung,” ‘ Virch. Arch.,’ xlv, 333) gives an account of his microscopic researches on the condition of the cornea in frogs after the production of artificial keratitis (by cauterization with nitrate of silver), together with similar experiments on the papillae of the tongue in the same animal. Erom his observations he believes it to be proved that the stellate connective-tissue corpuscles of the cornea take no part in the inflammatory process, either by division or otherwise, but remain unchanged (1. c., p. 334) ; and that, if only the name “ pus-cells” be not given promiscuously to all morphological elements found in inflamma- tory deposits, but only to “ colourless cells, containing one or more nuclei, and endowed with contractility and the amoeboid faculty of changing form ” (1. c., p. 33o), their only source, or at least their only primary source, must, for the present, be sought for in the blood- vessels of inflamed tissue. On the same side Hayem (‘ Gaz. Med. de Paris,’ 1870, pp. 3, 40, 33) gives the results of his experiments on the mesentery, tongue, and lung of frogs, agreeing in almost every particular with the conclusions arrived at by Cohnheim. Whatever the tissue employed, the inflamma- tory and suppurative processes took place in the same manner; and the order of succession of phenomena, as observed especially in the mesen- tery, was as follows : 1. Dilatation of the arteries. 2. Dilatation of all the vessels. 3. Contraction of the arteries and dilatation of the veins 3$