A treatise on inflammation / by James Macartney.

  • Macartney, James, 1770-1843.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on inflammation / by James Macartney. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    The human being, above all others, is disposed to inflammation, sometimes in consequence of the slightest external irritation, and of various internal disorders. The nervous system of the human subject is so complicated, that there is hardly a local affection with which the constitution does not sympathize, nor any constitutional disturbance which may not become the cause of local disease. The same susceptibility, however, communicates a power to the means we may employ for preventing or abating inflammatory action, which does not belong to animals of an inferior organiza- tion ; and when by those means we are enabled to remove the sense of injury sustained, or produce a state of sensibility inconsistent with inflammation, the reparative processes go on much in the same manner as in animals endowed with an inferior degree of feeling. The history I have given of the effects of injury in the different classes of animals, proves that the powers of reparation and of re- production are in proportion to the indisposition or incapacity for inflammation, and leads necessarily to the induction, that inflam- mation is so far from being necessary to the reparation of parts, that in proportion as it exists the latter is impeded, retarded, or prevented, and that when inflammation does not exist, the repara- tive power is equivalent to the original tendency to produce and maintain organic form and structure; that it then becomes a natural function, like the growth of the individual or the reproduc- tion of the species. I am aware that this opinion is opposed to universally received doctrines. The subject, I think, has never been fairly examined. The necessity of some degree of inflamma- tion to the process of reparation has been supposed by the early surgeons, and has been received by the moderns without inquiry. The opinion arose in those rude ages of the art when nothing was trusted to nature, and when the treatment of every wound was such as to induce and maintain for a certain time the most severe in- flammation. The ignorance of the ancients of the use of the ligature for suppressing hemorrhage, led them to employ, instead of it, strong compression, and the actual cautery in cases of wounds and after amputation; and being accustomed to see wounds ulti- mately heal after such barbarous treatment, they naturally supposed that inflammation and all its evil consequences were necessarv ; which they took care to ensure in all cases, by boiling oils, hot and irritating ointments, tents, setons, and strict and cumbrous bandages. Mr. Hunter, in his inestimable work on inflammation, when describing the union by what is called the first intention, seemed aware of the possibility of wounds healing without any inflam- matory action ; he says the union in such cases is without pain or constitutional disturbance, proceeds as if nothing had happened. In another place he says, There is only a feeling of tenderness in the part, and that is entirely from the injury done, and not from the operation of union. In treating of the same subject, he further says, that inflammation comes on as a necessary consequence of parts being too weak to unite by the first intention, or not having