Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 6. General disturbance or fever, however induced, is apt to terminate in some local affection. Most people have what may be called their weak part, which gives way on such occasions, and in many acts like a safety- valve, by protecting organs of more importance; as when sore throat, herpetic eruptions of the ears, or erysipelas, is apt to result from constitutional disturbance. This proneness to particular local diseases may be either congenital or the result of habit. In the former case it leads to what is called hereditary disease, of which gout may be mentioned as an example. Treatment of Injlummation. The great object in treating inflammation is to make it terminate in Resolution, ?that is, to subside and disappear without leaving any change in the structure or actions of the part. The most obvious step in the first instance with this view is removal of the cause which excited the disease, should it still continue in operation. When the cause is direct, this can sometimes be accomplished speedily and perfectly, as when a foreign body occasions disturbance by its presence. But when it is of an indirect kind, such as the suppression of some natural secretion or discharge, from the mucous membrane or uterus for instance, the process for removing it is generally more difficult, requiring the careful administration of medicine and strict attention to regimen. When the cause cannot be remedied at once, or when the inflammation continues after its cause has ceased to operate, which is generally the case, the morbid action requires the use of means for its suppression. The symptoms of inflammation naturally suggest the abstraction of blood, ?and this until lately has accordingly always been regarded as its great antidote, though much less often really required than was form..