When the alteration of the organic sensibility which produces inflammation, has no varieties except in its intensity, the inflammation itself differs only in degree. But the nature of the alteration is oftentimes different; a feeble character is frequently united with it; the part has then less redness, heat, &c. Other modifications are also observed; now all these depend upon the difference of the alterations that the organic sensibility experiences; at least these alterations always precede them. The influence of these alterations is not less evident when inflammation terminates, than when it begins. If the organic sensibility has been so raised, that it is as it were exhausted, then the solid dies, and the fluid, which is no longer in a living organ, soon becomes putrid. Examine the phenomena of every gangrene; putrefaction is certainly only a consequence; there is always, 1st, a desertion of the solids by the vital forces; 2d, putrefaction of the fluids. The first is never a consequence of the second. When the organic sensibility begins to diminish, the blood brought there by inflammation is already susceptible of putrefaction; but the defect of tone in the solid always precedes. There is this local phenomenon, as well as the general, in putrid fever. It is incontestable that in this fever, the blood has a tendency to be decomposed, to become putrid; I will say further, that it often exhibits a commencing putrefaction. The index of the alteration of this fluid is always the general state of the forces of the solids; these have first lost their spring; the symptoms of weakness are evident before those of putridity. All the animal fluids tend naturally to putrefaction, which takes place inevitably when life abandons the solids in which they circulate. In proportion as the forces diminish in the solids, this tendency is manifested. A commencement of putrefaction in the fluids during life, is not a general phenomenon more improbable than the local phenomenon of which we have spoken, viz. that the blood of an inflamed part begins to putrefy and the part consequently becomes fetid, before the organic sensibility has entirely abandoned the solid. It is only when this ceases, that this putrefaction becomes complete; but then it is extremely rapid, because it had commenced during life. So bodies that have died of putrid fevers decompose with a rapidity far surpassing those that have died of other diseases, because putrefaction had really commenced before death.