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Inflammation is from a Greek word which means a flame, to burn as a flame, a condition of being inflamed. The early idea of inflammation was that of an entity and the treatment that of exorcism, adjuration or conjuration of evil spirits, expelling or driving out or off an evil spirit by using a holy name. Pathologists state, inflammation is an inflammable condition, which like a fire must be subdued by appropriate means, such as antiphlogistines, counterirritants, venesection, cupping, leeching and the use of mercury. That inflammation is a local attempt to repair an injury. That inflammation is a local reaction to irritation, it tends to counteract an injurious agent and repair its deleterious effect. That inflammation is conservative in tendency, benign in disposition, the result of a carefully adjusted protective mechanism. That inflammation is a purifyer, a body cleanser. The condition known as inflammation is brought about by disturbed tissue which have been damaged. The fact is, as demonstrated by the art of chiropractic, borne out by the principles of the science and the reasoning of its philosophy, inflammation and distubed functions are the result of nerves being injured. Inflammation is a condition wherein the function of heat is performed in too great a degree, the result of morbid nerve tissue. Inflammation is recognized by redness, swelling, heat, pain, impaired functions, over renitent tissue and a change in catabolism. Inflammation may be seated in any organ or tissue of the body wherein there are nerves. The hair, nails and cartilage are void of blood vessels and nerves, therefore are not subject to inflammation, neuritis or arteritis. The part inflamed has a temperature much higher than the rest of the body. Blood has the same temperature throughout the vasacular system. Inflammation modifies physiological processes. Some of our grandfathers believed that animal heat was furnished by a set of nerves which were known as calorific--heat furnishing. When the surrounding temperature was above 99 degrees, there was another set which they named frigerific--cold producing. I am often told that anatomy cannot be otherwise than correct. I do not object to the slight difference in the number, form and structure of normal tissue found in different subjects, reversed organs, but I do disapprove of the physiological and pathological deductions. Grey says on page 846 of his 1910 edition, “Inflammation of the spinal cord (myelitis) may follow any of the acute specific fevers.” Fever is diffused inflammation. There can be no fever without a local inflammation. Inflammation always precedes fever. The sensible phenomena indicating inflammation are redness, heat, pain, swelling and disordered function. Redness because of excess of blood containing the red corpuscles; heat because of nerve excitation, contraction and excessive vibration; pain is a sensation confined to nerves only; inflamed nerves are swollen, enlarged in their diameter and contracted lengthwise; functions are disordered because of disturbed nervous tissue, normal function depends upon normal amount of energy, an impulse gives too much force or a lack of arouses too much latent energy or not enough. We are told by pathologists that the pain and swelling are because of congestion. Pathologists look to blood as a functional disturber. If a disturber it should also be a corrector. The blood is one of the four liquids of the body, the only one which circulates; the other fluids osmose, transudate through moist membranes. Dunglison says, “Inflammation is not easily defined.” If pathologists knew that heat was a function of nerves, the cause and the condition of inflammation would be easily accounted for and explained. Such knowledge would let in a flood of light on the etiology of many diseases now given as obscure. Blood circulates; serum, lymph and chyle, osmose, transudate, pass through a moist membrane. Artero-sclerosis in old age is physiological. In youth and adult life it is pathological. Post mortem examinations show but little of which we desire to know. Examine the living subject for benefit and information. Neuritis, nerve inflamed, sensitive to the touch, hardened, enlarged diametrically and contracted lengthwise. Microscopic examination shows myelin sheaths, swollen fibers (filaments, axis sylinders). Owing to the number of fibers we may have multiple neuritis. Filaments of one nerve may leave it and join another. Neuritis changes the structure of nerves. Arteritis modifies the structure of arteries. Inflammation is present in most, if not all diseases, in the acute if not the chronic. Inflammation of the mucous membrane causes catarrh of any canal, cavity or hollow organ which communicates externally by an aperture through the skin. Nerve contraction causes an undue amount of heat, gall stones, hardened ear wax and dropsy are because of inflammation. The healing of wounds and fractures require a rise in temperature in order to furnish a larger per cent than usual of the red corpuscles. The degree of general temperature determines the per cent of red and white corpuscles. Local temperature determines the per cent of red or white and the amount of leakage deposited. Necrotic inflammation causes death of tissue; softened tissue has little or no vibration, the carrying quality of impulses. Inflammation is characterized by excessive emigration of leukocytes from the blood vessels, which soon disappear by colliquative necrosis. Arteritis is an inflammation of an artery, the nervi vasorum is irritated, inflamed. Blood vessels rupture because of being softened. Softening and hardening are known as malacia and sclerosis. Many persons suffer in an amputated limb, because the pressure, the cause of pain and other diseased conditions, has not been removed. “Blood poisoning, septicemia, pyemia, toxemia,” are medical terms used to account for any ailment which is presumed to arise from introduction of decomposed organic matter into the blood, excrementitious toxins of the intestinal canal not properly eliminated, putrefactive micro-organic germs which grow and multiply in the blood. In the above pathological conditions, please remember, morbid tissue and abnormal functionating always accompany each other. It is impossible for either to exist without the other. “Blood poisoning” will be found coexisting with a more or less intense nervous irritation known as inflammation, a tissue necrosis. The tissue shows very marked alterations, the cells or intercellular substance is softened and disintegrated. While it is a fact that inflammation causes abnormal organic manifestation, there are no new functions developed. Physiological acts have become pathological. We are now back to the elementary proposition, nerves heat the blood, as well as all parts of the body. Hyperthermia changes the amount of and the per cent of the solid substances of the blood, the corpuscles. Behind all abnormal functions, is the change in the structure of nerve tissue and an increase or decrease of nerve vibration. The following quotations were clipped from The Los Angeles Times of August 17, 1912. “Cold feet and cold hands -- other things being equal these indicate poor circulation.” I presume that circulation refers to the blood, as no other fluid of the body circulates, makes a circuit. The blood remains the same temperature throughout the body regardless of the feet and hands being cold or warm. The blood is the same temperature in the warm hands and the cold feet; the same blood circulates throughout the body about seventy times a minute. “You should eat nourishing food and make good blood and enough of the starches, sweets, and fat to make heat.” If it takes nourishing food to make good blood, then bad blood would be the result of eating unnutritious food. “What is one man’s food is another man’s poison.” Dr. Warman follows the above with morning and evening exercises of the hands and feet. Exercise excites the nervous system, causing an increase of vibration, consequently increased heat. A. T. Still, the founder of osteopathy, says, on page 74 of his work, that bad blood is the cause of fibroid tumors, painful monthlies, constipation, diabetes and dyspepsia. The founder of chiropractic states that, nerve impingement, pressure against nerves, and more or less nerve tension than normal, is the cause of these diseases -- quite a difference between osteopathy and chiropractic. Food furnishes material for the production of living tissue; it embraces those substances which are necessary for the maintenance and composition of the body. Bad blood is defined by pathologists as a deficiency in quantity, or a lack of the proper amount of red corpuscles. Pernicious anemia, a deficient amount of blood, or a deficiency in the relative number of red corpuscles, is a pathological condition which does not depend upon the amount of, or the quality of the food taken, but upon the temperature of the body. It is true, ingesta which irritates, acts as a poison on the nervous system, modifies the activity of molecular oscillation and increases heat production. The circulation of the blood and its quality depend upon the condition of the nervous system. Medical practitioners state, an anemia may be due to an insufficient amount of food, excessive drain, exhausting discharges, blood-waste, hemorrhages, action of poisons, idiopthic (no known or recognized cause), and the cause is often obscure. Traumatic injuries and poisons affect nerve plexuses which are freely distributed on the surface and into the substance of the heart, the nervi vasorum surrounding the arteries and veins, supplying the media (middle coat) with a network of nerve fibers which form dense plexuses giving them the power of contractility. This function of shortening into a more compact form, a power possessed by living muscle-fibers and the nervous tissue, is modified by poisons and the displacement of the neuroskeleton. |