"As inflammation is an action produced for the restoration of the most simple injury in sound parts which goes beyond the power of union by the first intention, we must look upon it as one of the most simple operations in nature, whatever it may be when arising from disease, or diseased parts. Inflammation is to be considered only a disturbed state of parts, which requires a new but salutary mode of action to restore them to that state wherein a natural mode of action alone is necessary. Therefore inflammation in itself is not to be considered a disease, but a salutary operation consequent either to some violence or to some disease."—Ibid. vol. iv. p. 285.
"A wound or bruise cannot recover itself but by inflammation."—Ibid. p. 286.
"From whatever cause inflammation arises, it appears to be nearly the same in all; for in all it is an effort intended to bring about a reinstatement of the parts to their natural function."—Ibid. p. 286.
Results of Inflammation.—"Inflammation is said to terminate in resolution, effusion, adhesion, suppuration, ulceration, granulation, cicatrization, and mortification. All these different terminations, except the last, may be regarded as so many vital processes, exerted in different parts of the animal economy."—Prof. Thompson, p. 97.
"Inflammation must needs occupy a large share of attention of both the physician and the surgeon. In nine cases out of ten, the first question which either of them asks himself, on being summoned to the patient, is, Have I to deal with inflammation here? It is constantly the object of his treatment and watchful care. It affects all parts that are furnished with blood-vessels, and it affects different parts very variously.... It is by inflammation that wounds are closed and fractures repaired—that parts adhere together when their adhesion is essential to the preservation of the individual, and that foreign and hurtful matters are conveyed out of the body. A cut finger, a deep sabre wound, alike require inflammation to reunite the divided parts. Does ulceration occur in the stomach or intestines, and threaten to penetrate through them—inflammation will often forerun and provide against the danger—glue the threatened membrane to whatever surface may be next it.... The foot mortifies, is killed by injury or by exposure to cold—inflammation will cut off the dead and useless part. An abscess forms in the liver, or a large calculus concretes in the gall-bladder: how is the pus or the calculus to be got rid of?... Partial inflammation precedes and prepares for the expulsion; the liver or the gall-bladder becomes adherent to the walls of the abdomen on the one hand, or to the intestinal canal on the other; and then the surgeon may plunge his lancet into the collection of pus, or the abscess; or the calculus may cut its own way safely out of the body, through the skin or into the bowels."—Watson, p. 94.
"The salutary acts of restoration and prevention just adverted to, are such as nature conducts and originates. But we are ourselves able, in many instances, to direct and control the effect of inflammation—nay, we can excite it at our pleasure; and, having excited it, we are able, in a great degree, to regulate its course. And for this reason it becomes, in skilful hands, an instrument of cure."—Ibid. p. 94.
The above quotations are not complete. They are selections from the sources whence they are drawn of those portions which testify that fever and inflammation are one and the same thing, and that this same thing consists in a salutary effort of nature to protect the organs of the body from the action of the causes of disease, or to remove those causes and their effects from the organs once diseased. That the same authors teach the very contrary of all this in the same paragraphs, and often in the same sentences, the following extracts will clearly prove:—
Inflammation produces disease.—"When inflammation cannot accomplish that salutary purpose, (a cure,) as in cancer, scrofula, &c., it does mischief."—Hunter, p. 285.
"Inflammation is occasionally the cause of disease."—Ibid. p. 286.
"In one point of view, it may be considered as a disease itself."—Ibid.