Inflammation regarded as a physiological reaction to an infecting lesion : the oration of the Hunterian Society, delivered at the London Institution, February 11th, 1885 / by F. Charlewood Turner.

  • Turner, Francis Charlewood, 1843-1900.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inflammation regarded as a physiological reaction to an infecting lesion : the oration of the Hunterian Society, delivered at the London Institution, February 11th, 1885 / by F. Charlewood Turner. 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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    clinical facts, and clearly distinguishing this grave com- plication from other conditions of damage, may be con- structed by a combination of some of Hunter^s state- ments quoted above, and nearly in his own words. Inflammation may thus be defined as a salutary opera- tion consequent either to some violence or to some dis- ease,” where “ the local symptoms have afterwards spread beyond the limits of the injury,” with an increase of the mischief;” “ an effect intended to bring about a rein- statement of the parts nearly to their original function.” Or the same thing may be expressed in other words, as the recuperative and remedial action of the organism directed to arrest the advance of an infecting (fermenta- tive) morbid process of destructive tendency, developed in the tissue consecutively to damage from injury or other cause; or more precisely, and I think equally well, as the state of a part, in which a condition of damage has become complicated by the development in the damaged tissue of an infecting morbid process of destruc- tive and irritant character, and which is the seat of a recuperative affluxus of blood determined thereby. For, as I shall endeavour to explain in more detail, this afflux of blood is the efficient agent by which, in all degrees of the injurious and destructive effect of the morbid process, and in the different stages or forms of the inflammatory action determined by it, the infective process (or its infecting power) is arrested; and by which the way is thus opened for the advance of the processes of repair, the initial steps of which its occurrence had disturbed. The justness of Hunter’s conception of inflammation, as primarily and essentially a salutary and remedial action