INFLAMMATION
Inflammation is a morbid process characterized by the presence of increased temperature and one or more of the symptoms, pain, redness, and swelling. It is distinguished from fever by being confined locally, while fever is a general functional disturbance showing elevation of temperature, increased katabolism, decreased secretion, etc.
Our clinical experience with fevers leads us to accept Metchnikoff’s conclusion that the essential phenomenon of inflammation is hyperaemia. Upon the hyperaemia depend the swelling, pain, and local increase in heat-production. Hyperaemia in turn depends upon disturbance of the vasomotor nerves either as a direct result of some local subluxation or as an indirect consequence of local irritation.
A newly acquired subluxation produces an acute irritation of the pre-ganglionic axons which connect the spinal nerves with the sympathetic ganglia. If these ganglia send out post-ganglionic axons which are vaso-motor in function, an inflammation may be produced without the intervention of any secondary cause. On the other hand, there may be a subluxation producing weakness of some part; through injury to that part or the introduction of poisons or irritants such as germ infection, sensory end-organs are affected and the motor reaction which follows increases the subluxation; this slight increase produces acute irritation of the nerve and hyperaemia, with its resultant phenomena, follows. Stated briefly, irritants produce inflammation only by acting through the medium of the spine. If the spine be normal these irritants are insufficient to produce morbid process. Local inflammation tends to develop toxins, especially if it be of bacterial origin, which may in turn affect the entire organism—an effect which will be discussed presently. Exception must be made in those traumatic cases in which hyperaemia is essential to the reparatory process, and which are attended by what may be termed a normally increased heat-production. This beneficent and reparatory condition cannot be termed disease or morbid process.
The normal temperature of the body depends upon the balance maintained between heat-production and heat-expenditure. This balance is maintained through a complicated nerve mechanism consisting of various nidi in thalamus, medulla, spinal cord and sympathetic ganglia, and a network of communicating axons of both the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic systems, controlling the amount of blood passing through any given body area at a given time, the secretion of the perspiratory glands, the internal metabolic processes, etc. Most important are the vaso-motor nerves, directly, but not originally, derived from the sympathetic, and governing the size and caliber of all blood-vessels so as to control the amount of blood flowing to and through the surface capillaries on the one hand, or the deep-seated, heat-making organs on the other. More than seventy per cent of the body’s heat expenditure is through the skin by evaporation, radiation, and direct conduction. The major portion of the heat production is in the muscles and the parenchymatous viscera, such as liver, spleen, etc., where metabolism is active.
This mechanism is so delicately adjusted that when the outside temperature is lowered the amount of blood passing to the skin is reflexly lessened while internal heat production is increased and the bodily temperature retained at normal. Conversely, the body perspires freely and the surface is flushed with blood in a high temperature, so that heat production is lessened and its discharge accelerated, again tending to maintain an even and normal temperature.
The nervous mechanism is responsive to many and various forms of stimuli—thermic, emotional, mechanical, physiologic need, toxic. Poisons in circulation may affect the bulbar center and produce general fever. A number of centers in the spinal gray may be stimulated with like result. Or there may be purely local irritation which results in local hyperaemia and inflammation.
It will always be found that the primary cause of any permanent derangement of the mechanism lies in vertebral subluxation impinging some of the nerves and thus throwing the mechanism out of its natural balance and poise. Other forms of disturbance are transient and the very nature of the mechanism makes it normally capable of adjusting itself to thermic, mechanic, or emotional stimuli in a short time. Only the subluxation produces permanent elevation of temperature. When such elevation does occur there are many associated changes, increased katabolism, lessening of secretions, anorexia, sometimes mental changes, such as delirium or coma. Fevers vary according to the part of the nerve mechanism affected and the action of any secondary causes.
Fever due to vertebral subluxation alone without any secondary cause operating is very rare. Ordinarily fevers come about in this way. A subluxation occurs which weakens tissue and permits germ invasion; toxins enter the circulation from the germ action and motor reaction increases the original subluxation and causes local inflammation; germ activity is favored by the increasing degree of abnormality and toxins from rapid tissue destruction are added to those already present. The poison-loaded blood then affects the general centers for heat regulation, blood becomes internally engorged, and a chill (internal fever) followed by general increase of temperature occurs. At this juncture any subluxation previously existing is likely to be increased and to add its quota of harm to the rapidly developing picture.
Our problem is to find the original subluxation which controls the site of the original pathologic change and to correct that. In nearly all cases where this is done, even partially, the body is enabled to care for the remainder of the damage and to throw off the accumulated toxins. It is not uncommon that the temperature falls two degrees in five or ten minutes after a proper adjustment. We expect always to abort or check a fever in twenty-four hours or less.
There are cases in which the temperature drops after adjustment but presently rises again. This indicates the virulence of the autointoxication or that some other area of poison production is operating than the one our first adjustment would control. A correct diagnosis will enable one to give specific adjustment and check practically any fever except a chronic one with much tissue destruction already accomplished; even some of these yield.
The commonest cause of fever is at the fifth or sixth Dorsal vertebra, long known as Center Place, or Fever Center. Here emerge many pre-ganglionic fibres which distribute their impulses through lower neurons in the sympathetic system to the coeliac plexus and thence to the blood-vessels supplying the major portion of the abdominal viscera. Adjustment here causes a sudden contraction of these abdominal vessels and a forcing of the blood to the surface with rapid cooling.
Often, however, this adjustment is followed by a recrudescence which indicates that some other vertebra must be adjusted. Many fevers, such as typhoid, pneumonia, tonsilitis, etc., yield to specific local adjustment without any involvement of the so-called Center Place.
I have said that we expect to check or abort a fever with spinal adjustments. The facts that we do so and that the more rapidly we accomplish the result the more rapid the convalescence and the less likely are complications and sequelae argue loudly against the correctness of any theory which supposes fever to be a beneficial and cleansing process. According to such theory it would be totally wrong and dangerous to abort a fever but wiser to encourage it in taking its course. The exact opposite proves true under Chiropractic. The very fact that fevers do diminish and disappear under proper adjustments is a proof that they are abnormal, since adjustment does not in any case tend to lessen normal processes, but only to restore normality no matter in what way the functions of the body have departed from that condition.
All the clinical evidence gathered by Chiropractors in regard to inflammations and fevers tends to prove the correctness of the theories herein set down. Fever plays a part in so many diseases that it has been considered advisable to consider the subject under a special head.