If the doctrine of Fever formed one of the fundamental principles of Allopathic medicine, the doctrine of Inflammation formed the other. Prof. Pain declared (Institutes of Medicine, P. 464), "The most important principles in medicine are those which especially relate to inflammation and fever."

Prof. Watson said: "Inflammation must needs occupy a large share of the attention, both of the surgeon and of the physician. In nine cases out of ten, the first question which either of them asks himself upon being summoned to a patient is--Have I to deal with inflammation here? It is continually the object of his treatment and watchful care." He also says (Practice, p. 94) inflammation is "a special form of disease to which all parts of the body are liable--a disease that meets us at every turn."

Dr. James Thatcher (Practice, Vol. 1, P. 3) called inflammation "the disease." Dr. John Thompson, who says the same of fever and inflammation, tells us "That this view, however, of the subject of inflammation is just, must appear obvious, when we reflect that, of all the morbid afflictions to which the human body is liable, inflammation is not only one of the most distinct in its forms, and important in its consequences, but it is also by far the most frequent in its occurrence. Indeed there are no external injuries of which inflammation is not almost the immediate effect, and but few, if any, local diseases of which it is not, in some degree or other to be regarded as concomitant, cause, symptom, or consequence."

Prof. Thompson praises Sir John Hunter for his years of painstaking study of inflammation and adds, "In most points relative to inflammation, I shall endeavor to follow that distinguished pathologist as my best and most accurate guide."

Prof. Marshall Hall, (P. 98, No. 362) says, "The doctrine of inflammation is the most important in the theory of medicine and surgery." This work of Hall's was endorsed by Profs. Bigelow and Holmes, of Harvard University, both outstanding medical men of their time.

Prof. Paine declared (Institutes, p. 464) ; "Inflammation and fever are two orders of disease which make up the great amount of human maladies, and form the grand outlets of life." "Idiopathic fever is a universal disease, inflammation always local."

Prof. Watson says: (Practice, p. 94.) "It affects all parts, that are furnished with blood vessels, and it affects different parts very variously. It is more easily excited by many external causes, and therefore it is more common than any other special disease. A great majority of all disorders to which the human frame is liable, begin with inflammation, or end in inflammation, or are accompanied by inflammation in their symptoms. Most of the organic changes of different parts of the body recognize inflammation as their cause, or lead it to as their effect. In short, a very large share of the premature extinction of human life in general is more or less attributable to inflammation."

I need not multiply testimony to show that the Allopaths regarded inflammation as disease. Inflammation to them was a protean monster which might be "concomitant, cause, symptom, or consequence," the beginning or the ending of disease, the cause or the effect of organic change, one of the most common of human maladies and the cause of a large share of the premature deaths in man. Medical authors all referred to Thompson and Hunter for their doctrines of fever and inflammation. Indeed Profs. Holmes and Bigelow, in their edition of Marshall Hall, say: "Whoever would be intimately acquainted with inflammation and fever must give his days and nights to the study of Hunter and John Thompson."

It matters not that Hunter, Watson, Thompson, and Paine, sometimes caught a glimpse of the true nature of fever and inflammation, and gave utterances to statements the very opposite of what I have here quoted from them, the doctrines of fever and inflammation herein given were accepted by the whole medical world, including these four men, and universally acted upon in practice.

Until a little over thirty years ago the medical profession continued to regard inflammation as an evil and spent much time endeavoring to determine whether it was due to excess action or deficient action in the inflamed parts. Regardless of which theory they held, they all agreed that it should be suppressed and employed the same means with which to suppress it. In 1897 Prof. G. Bier presented his paper on inflammation as a constructive process, after which the fact began slowly to be accepted, theoretically, although it continues to be dismissed and ignored in practice, and every effort is still made to suppress it. But the beneficent office of inflammation has been proclaimed outside the field of medicine for over a hundred years.

Samuel Thompson, founder of the Physio-Medical School, who lived in the closing years of the Eighteenth Century, apparently taught this fact. Certain it is that his followers of seventy-five years ago proclaimed it. Prof. Curtis, for instance, in his Medical Criticisms, (p. 176) says: "Before the present century (the 19th), Samuel Thompson, of Alstead, New Hampshire, discovered that law, the primitive fact, and expressed it in the language that 'fever is a friend to the System and not an enemy; and should be aided, not opposed, in its effort to remove disease or its cause.' Such is his doctrine, also, of irritation and inflammation. But learned men do not love to look in the lower walks of society (Thompson was an uneducated farmer) for men who will unfold to them the Mysteries of Nature."

J. S. Thomas, M.D., in his work: "Physio-Medicalism," (1870) says: "No laceration of the flesh can be healed without the aid of that physiological operation termed inflammation, which together with fever they (the Allopaths) treat as disease.--p. 162.

In his "Philosophy of Human Life," (1852) Dr. Jennings records a case of "Inflammation of the eyes, with general inflammatory affection," in which his partner in practice became alarmed and insisted that medicines be used saying, "You will lose your patient if you do not do something to purpose soon; the eyes are already gone past redemption." Dr. Jennings replied: "This is not a freak of nature*** There was an imperative necessity for just the series of developments in this case that have been and yet are to be made." He explained also that "Inflammatory heat never rises high enough to do positive harm," and used to refer to a man who was laid up with any "disease", but particularly with an inflammatory "disease," as having been "suddenly laid aside for repairing purposes." He regarded inflammation in any part of the body as a process of repair and strengthening. It was particularly, he thought, a means by which the body strengthened, weakened parts and fortified all parts against irritation.