The term _Passive_ Inflammation has been applied to that state in which the larger vessels are not excited, or have ceased to sympathise with the capillary branches. The term _Chronic_ Inflammation is properly limited to the consequence of the acute inflammatory action, the part remaining turgid and swollen, the vessels over-distended with dark blood, but with little or no pain, and without heat or throbbing. _Congestion_ is also employed to denote fulness of the vessels, large as well as small, when no sign of excited circulation, or of decided inflammatory action, has occurred. It is most frequently used, however, when describing the condition of an internal organ. An over-distention of a particular set of vessels may certainly exist (as a consequence of inflammation, or altogether unconnected with it), unattended with inflammatory action. These two states ought to be carefully distinguished from a similar condition of the vessels, attended with inflammation; for practice, which would be beneficial in the one case, is highly prejudicial in the other, and lamentable examples of the non-attention to this distinction are every day observed. It may here be mentioned, that some have denied the existence of vitality in the blood; and to some minds it may, perhaps, be difficult to conceive how a fluid should be possessed of this principle. But no one can either doubt or deny that the blood, in its distribution, in its manner of receiving increase, in the secretions furnished by it, and in its various morbid changes, is governed by certain laws and principles which cannot be explained by those of chemistry or mechanics, but must belong to some other power. It is allowed, and has been promulgated by all authors, that the blood is one of the most active agents in the animal economy—in repairing waste, in affording peculiar fluids necessary in that economy, in supplying organs with materials for carrying on their functions, &c.; and yet all this, according to some, is accomplished by a dead animal fluid; no one can plausibly object to the laws by which the blood is governed being referred to the power of life, and to their being called Vital Principles.