Inflammation regarded as a physiological reaction to an infecting lesion : the oration of the Hunterian Society, delivered at the London Institution, February 11th, 1885 / by F. Charlewood Turner.

  • Turner, Francis Charlewood, 1843-1900.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Inflammation regarded as a physiological reaction to an infecting lesion : the oration of the Hunterian Society, delivered at the London Institution, February 11th, 1885 / by F. Charlewood Turner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    be doubted wlietber any pathogenic organisms exist to which resistance is not presented by the tissues in greater or less degree—whether any contagia are capable of causing pathological lesions, unless a defective nutritive state of some part affords them the exceptional conditions necessary for their multiplication to a degree injurious to the organism. Only on such a supposition would it be possible that any unprotected individual should pass through an epidemic of an infectious disease without being attacked by it. The latent period of incubation in the primary local lesions of certain infectious diseases after inoculation, as in the case of traumatic inflammation, shows that the specific germs of such diseases, like the micrococci, are innocuous as at first introduced, and become injurious only by active development inside the body ; their in- fectiousness depending upon the comparative feebleness of the resistance of the tissues to their growth. I think, therefore, that if any specific organism of infectious diseases in the air, or in water or other fluids, may be spoken of as pathogenic, these atmospheric micro- cocci (or germs) may be spoken of as infective phlogo- genic organisms with equal propriety. The comparatively great resistance of the tissues to these generally diffused micro-organisms, is a provision manifestly necessary to the existence of individuals con- tinually subject to invasion by them. It appears to me then, that, while the clinical facts present inflammation, as, on the one hand, a condition of indefinitely progressive damage caused by an infecting morbific process of destructive nature, and on the other, as a remedial process dh-ected to arrest the advance of the