Femina, A Work for Every Woman

by John A. Miller

CHAPTER X.

HISTOLOGY OF INFLAMMATION.

Inflammations of the various tissues assume different forms as far as the gross appearances are concerned, but the underlying condition is precisely the same. The various types of inflammations that are produced by one and the same process are of considerable scientific interest, but to the practical and inquiring reader, whose principal object is to obtain sufficient information to be able to cure herself, it would be confusing were I to attempt a description of their differences.

There is no word that is so often employed as inflammation, as a designation of disease, and when we learn that there is only one kind of inflammatory process, whether of the brain, the lungs, liver, kidneys or bowels, the entire subject of inflammatory diseases at once becomes greatly simplified, because if you understand one you must understand all.

I will in the subsequent chapters speak only, or principally, of inflammatory affections of the different organs that come within the province of this specialty, and I am convinced that if the reader will bear with me, so that I may take sufficient time and space to explain the most advanced scientific views of inflammatory processes, she will be more than compensated, by a clearer understanding of what will be said in succeeding pages.

Inflammation comprises a series of phenomena, which partly take place in the vascular apparatus or blood vessels and partly in the tissues comprising the structure of the organ. Inasmuch as inflammation is not a single process, a definition of a few words is insufficient to convey to the mind its real meaning. If I were simply to describe the peculiarities of the circulation, that characterize the inflammatory process, we should only have an incomplete idea of the changes that were taking place.

Since the time of Galen, who lived two hundred years after Christ, inflammation was recognized by four cardinal symptoms, namely redness (Ruber), swelling (Tumor), pain (Dolor) and the increased temperature (Calor). To these modern pathologists have added a fifth symptom, which is lessened or diminished function (Functio Læsa).

The above five cardinal symptoms can be established in the majority of the acute stages of inflammation: in the chronic or subacute variety, one or the other symptom may be absent, or so obscured as to escape notice.

The nature and structure of the tissue materially modify some symptoms and exclude others, so that redness, pain and even perceptible swelling may be absent. Galen already in his time attributed the redness to an increased blood supply and the swelling to an exudation of lymph or serum, through the walls of the blood vessels: this was as near the truth as scientists arrived, until within our own time. The discoveries in this field of science have been greatly enriched in the last twenty years through the researches of the German school. Various theories have been advanced from time to time, as to the probable causes or processes that are going on in the tissues while inflammation is active. One observer believed that he had found the solution of the inquiry in a supposed spasmodic contraction of the capillary blood vessels, another in their paralysis, while still another adhered to the belief of a neurotic affection. Professor Virchow, the father of the modern school of pathological science, ascribed the conditions of the tissues to an irritable state of the inflammatory process, inducing an exaggerated cell growth; while his former pupil, Cohnheim, through an extended series of newly-devised experiments, has conclusively proved that none of the theories advanced are supported by demonstrable facts.