Cases and observations illustrating inflammatory effusions into the substance of the lungs, particularly as modified by contagious fevers / by William Aitken, M.D.

  • Aitken, William, 1825-1892.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cases and observations illustrating inflammatory effusions into the substance of the lungs, particularly as modified by contagious fevers / by William Aitken, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    8/58 (page 4)
    Such a condition rendered tlic lung perfectly dense, independently of any exudation from its blood-vessels into its substance. These are circumstances which lead to fallacy in determining the nature of the lesion affecting the lung; and it must be of importance if microscopic observation, or any other mode of research, shall be found sufficient to establish a difference betvi^een condensation from inflammatory, and that from non-inflammatory congestion. The difference, however, has not yet been discovered; and if ever it shall be, its more early distinctive features may be sought for in a change of the blood itself. In reviewing the various theories of inflammation, and the changes which are described to take place in the blood, it is im- possible to avoid entertaining the notion that a peculiar dyscrasia exists, which is at once the cause of the constitutioflil disturb- ance, the local lesion, and the particular form in which the exu- dation from the blood-vessels may become organized. This dys- crasia may consist either in the blood containing a morbid material, or in its normal constitution being changed. The coalescing of the blood-corpuscles, and the formation of a bufiy coat, have long been supposed to be appearances especially connected with an in- flammatory state. To this dyscrasia Piorry has given the name of hsBraatitis. It has also been shown by Andral and Gavarret, that, during inflammation, an excess of fibrin exists in the blood, and that the proportion is not only increased relatively to the blood-globules and other constituents, but also in proportion to the whole amount of this fluid in the body. It is farther supposed that the blood is more inclined to adhere to the surrounding parts, from the appearances presented in the vessels, and from the fact of the corpuscles also possessing this property in regard to each other ; a phenomenon which some have conceived to depend upon a change in the relations of the attractive forces of an organic kind or others, subsisting between the several component parts of the blood and the surrounding textures. So much indeed is the healthy constitution of the blood affected during the existence of several acute diseases, that some are inclined to consider acute rheuma- tism, chorea,* and pericarditis,f to be dependent on a morbid condition of the blood. From all these circumstances I feel convinced, and it is my object in this paper to show, that dur- ing the progress of extensive exudations from the blood-vessels into any organ, a dyscrasia of the blood exists; that it is owing, in part, to the existence of some such dyscrasia that these exuda- tions take place, the ultimate nature of whose organization may be * Dr Begbie on Rheumatism and Chorea, p. 15, + Ur Taylor on the Causes of Pericarditis, in 28th vol. of Royal Med. and Chirurg. Soc. Trans., 1845.