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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    concurrently with, and in a manner to be subservient to, the recuperative reaction of the organism directed against the destructive process affecting it, the arrest of which is a necessary preliminary to the advance of repair. Quite distinct from the consideration of the physio- !logical action of the inflammatory affluxus, is that of the 'mechanism by which it is brought about. Those who with Hunter regard inflammation as essentially a remedial and salutary process, will be disposed to give especial ■ weight to those facts which indicate the reflex character of this vascular congestion. I think, however, that there are objections to that view of this phenomenon, in which I it is regarded as a local action of the vessels, the condition sine qua non for the production of which is not innerva- tion, but simply muscular excitability and contractility of them. Independently of the diflficulty of conceiving how such a co-ordinated vascular action could be brought about without the agency of vasomotor nerve-centres, central or peripheral, it seems highly improbable that a complex mechanism, by which an afiiux of blood to a part is observed to be brought about in the presence of a trivial disturbance of it, should not be made available in bringing about a similar afliuxus, directed to sustain the nutrition of the part in the presence of serious danger, urgently demanding its recuperative support. It appears to me also that the clinical and experimental facts, adduced by Burdon Sanderson in support of this view, are inconclusive on this account; that the division of the nerves of a part, or the division of all its structures but the principal vessels, cannot be said to cut off its