The treatment of wounds as based on evolutionary laws / by C. Pitfield Mitchell.

  • Mitchell, Charles Pitfield.
Date:
1883
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of wounds as based on evolutionary laws / by C. Pitfield Mitchell. 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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    two orders of changes, we have come to regard them as in some way co-operative. But by no sort of modification can an analytical process be concurrent with a synthetical process ; to the extent that there is suppuration there is either arrest of normal function—in the present case reparative action—or, the functional derangement being carried further, disintegration and death of tissue ; and if there is subsequent restoration of function and structure, the forces concerned reside in the uninjured parts.* Thus rendered, the foregoing laws help, I think, to give definiteness to our views of the particular changes engaging our attention. That they state, in a very generalized form, real phases of these changes might be further shown by ex- panding the illustrations dynamically. It might be made evi- dent, on the one hand, that with the integration of matter— development of tissue—-there is a concomitant dissipation of motion ; and, on the other hand, that with the disintegration of matter—dissolution of tissue—there is a concomitant ab- sorption of motion ; t organic evolution displaying an increase in the relative movements of wholes and a decrease in the relative movements of parts, and dissolution the reverse ; a retrocession “ from the motions of large masses to the motions of smaller masses, and from the motions of smaller masses to the motions of compound molecules, and from the motions of compound molecules to the motions of simple molecules.” But expatiation beyond this—not necessary for us—would imperil the coherence of our argument. We may, however, pause for a moment to mark that when the sequent phenomena formulated as the law of organic dissolution are taken as a revolution of the sequences formulated as the law of organic * A study of the intimate phenomena of inflammation leads Dr. Burdon Sander- son to insist “ that the resolution of an inflammation means either that the tempo- rarily arrested processes of normal life simply go on again, or, if the process have proceeded to its ultimate issue—death of the affected part—and what has been de- stroyed has to be repaired, not (as we used to think) by a continuation of the mor- bid process, but simply by the restitution of the normal condition.” Lumleian Lectures on Inflammation, 1883. f See Spencer's First Principles.