The power of nature in disease / by J. Wallace Anderson, M.D., formerly physician to the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, and lecturer on medicine, Queen Margaret College.

  • Anderson, J. Wallace (James Wallace)
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The power of nature in disease / by J. Wallace Anderson, M.D., formerly physician to the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, and lecturer on medicine, Queen Margaret College. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    just been discussing. It is a well-recognised fact, that while acute inflammations tend to affect the parenchyma of an organ, chronic inflammations involve chiefly the interstitial tissue. If an important organ of the body is attacked by acute inflamma- tion, Nature no doubt may effect a very complete restitution, as in the case of primary pneumonia. The process indeed will be carried out after the manner we have been considering, for though not in all probability by suppuration exactly, it will at least be by a process of softening or liquefying of the inflam- matory products which will lead either to their expulsion or absorption. But what is Nature to do, if the irritant or what- ever we call the cause of the inflammation, though never very potent at the moment, is unceasing in its action, sparing only to wound again. Take the case of the mason or the knife- grinder. The minute particles of stone or steel may for a time be thrown off by the increased bronchial secretion ; but still the irritant is renewed again and again, until at length, like the proverbial mud, a little of it sticks and that little becomes a little more. What can Nature do ; what does she do ? She determines that she will not have the more essential part of the lung interfered with while she can help it, and so she relegates these intolerable nuisances to all the out-of-the-way corners she can find ; and are there not the mazes of thej connective tissue just made for the purpose? Thus it is, as we have said, that chronic inflammations involve chiefly the linterstitial tissue. This, after all, is simply due to absorption by the lymphatics, for all recent research goes to show that lymphatic tissue is virtually universal, many regarding it and connective tissue as constituting a single system. And thus it is that we find the products of these slowly acting irritants spreading along the course of blood-vessels, invading the sub-serous and sub-mucous tissue of various viscera, or being packed away in neighbouring glands. So also if it be some slow and subtle poison from which the blood is never free. As it is borne along through liver, kidney or lung, it is absorbed and stowed away, anywhere out of sight, till by and by the evil thing creates a new mischief all its own, and nature gives up in despair. It is here that it most naturally occurs to one to notice the remarkable indications of a vis conservatrix that the so-called adhesive inflammation affords. Adhesions may not always be