XCIX.—When irritation causes the blood to accumulate in a part or tissue, and when, further, this accumulation of blood is accompanied by such an exceptional degree of swelling, redness and heat as to threaten the disorganization of the part thus irritated, it is customary to apply to this complex phenomenon the name of “inflammation.”
CXXVII.—Tubercles, cancers, etc., of the brain owe their origin to a chronic inflammation of that organ.
CLXVIII.—I have never seen tubercles of the lungs except in cases where these lesions had developed from an antecedent inflammation; and it does not appear to me that the tubercles which are observed in the lungs of infants at birth, may rightly be considered as having originated independently of inflammation.
CXCV.—All the different varieties of acute and subacute inflammation possess the power to produce cancer.
CCCVII.—He who does not know how to manage properly a case of irritability of the stomach will never be able to treat successfully any other malady. In short, the key to a knowledge of pathology is to be found in an intimate acquaintance with gastritis and gastro-enteritis.
CCCXLII.—Pulmonary phthisis may be prevented by putting an end, by means of antiphlogistic remedies and revulsives, soon after its presence is discovered, to any existing irritation of the respiratory apparatus.
BROUSSAIS
These dozen or more of Broussais’ “Propositions” or fundamental medical doctrines should suffice, it seems to me, to give the reader a correct idea of the kind of physiology and pathology that found favor in France during the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century, and that too despite the thoroughly sound and admirably logical, but less fascinating, teachings of such authorities as Morgagni, Bichat, Ch. A. P. Louis, Bayle, Corvisart and Laënnec.
It was toward the end of this same year (1821) that Laënnec began teaching his new method of auscultating the chest by means of the stethoscope—which had first been made known to the world by Auenbrugger in 1761, but which had been completely ignored until Corvisart published a French translation of Auenbrugger’s book in 1808. As early, however, as in 1819 Laënnec had published reports of a number of instances in which, by means chiefly of this method of exploration, he had correctly diagnosed the presence of tuberculous and other deposits in the lungs of certain patients. The publication of these reports evidently excited very much the wrath of Broussais, for in the new edition of his book (viz., that of 1821) he criticises Laënnec’s statements most unjustly and in a manner that reveals how completely his mind was saturated with the belief that what he calls “inflammation” is at the bottom of most of the pathological phenomena encountered in medical practice. Lack of space will not permit me to quote here more than one or two of Broussais’ comments on the conditions reported by Laënnec:—