Metchnikoff on the comparative pathology of inflammation / by John Lindsay Steven.

  • Steven, John Lindsay, 1859-1909.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Metchnikoff on the comparative pathology of inflammation / by John Lindsay Steven. 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.

    12/14 (page 10)
    phenomene d’un ordre beaucoup inoins important que I’inflam- mation par excellence, c’est-a-dire celle qui est accompagnde d’une accumulation des phagocytes dans le foyer enhamme.” From the point of view of comparative pathology, he also regards serous inflammation as genealogically of much more recent date than inflammation par excellence, which is accom- panied by a “ reaction leucocytaire.” In the twelfth lecture the theories of Virchow and Cohnheim are criticised in detail. The nutritive attraction theory of Vurchow is summarily dismissed as untenable. More considera- tion is shown to the injured vessel wall theory of Cohnheim, and many facts, experimental and natural, are adduced to demonstrate that it also must be rejected. He insists upon the different effects resulting from inflammatory causes introduced into the blood stream, and applied outside of the vascular system. In arguing thus, however, he applies the term inflammation in a manner that Cohnheim, and probably also the majority of living pathologists, would not accept. It is certainly something quite new to think of an intravascular inflammation. To quote the phenomena of recurrent fever in this regard, seems to be arguing in a way that Cohnheim would never have recognised. What we ordinarily understand by recurrent fever, and the poisoning of the blood that takes place in consequence of the presence there of the organisms, is something very different from inflammation as ordinarily understood by the morbid anatomist and the clinician. If we accept M. Metchnikoft’’s views of inflammation as indicated in this passage of his work, then we must start afresh and include in our definition of the process phenomena that have never- been so included before. The primum movens of inflamma- tion is a digestive reaction of the protoplasm against a noxious agent according to him. Cases of intravascular inflammation without diapedesis (“hemitis”), as illustrated by recurrent fever and the formation of intravascular tubercles have, so far as we know, never before been included in what we ordinarily understand by inflammation. But M. Metchnikoff makes out a tenable case in favour of his opinion, and whether we accept it or not, we are not surprised when he defines inflammation as follows:—“Inflammation in its entirety should then be regarded as a phagocyte reaction of the organism against irritant agents, a reaction which is sometimes accomplished by mobile phago- cytes alone, occasionally with the concurrence of vascular phagocytes or that of the nervous system.” Inflammation, then, is not a process for the regeneration of tissue, nor a provision for the absorption of, and consequent riddance of the