INFLAMMATIONS of the various tissues assume different forms as far as the gross appearances are concerned, but the underlying condition is precisely the same. The various types of inflammations that are produced by one and the same process are of considerable scientific interest, but to the practical and inquiring reader, whose principal object is to obtain sufficient information to be able to cure herself, it would be confusing were I to attempt a description of their differences. There is no word that is so often employed as _inflammation_, as a designation of disease, and when we learn that there is only one kind of inflammatory process, whether of the brain, the lungs, liver, kidneys or bowels, the entire subject of inflammatory diseases at once becomes greatly simplified, because if you understand one you must understand all. I will in the subsequent chapters speak only, or principally, of inflammatory affections of the different organs that come within the province of this specialty, and I am convinced that if the reader will bear with me, so that I may take sufficient time and space to explain the most advanced scientific views of inflammatory processes, she will be more than compensated, by a clearer understanding of what will be said in succeeding pages. Inflammation comprises a series of phenomena, which partly take place in the vascular apparatus or blood vessels and partly in the tissues comprising the structure of the organ. Inasmuch as inflammation is not a single process, a definition of a few words is insufficient to convey to the mind its real meaning. If I were simply to describe the peculiarities of the circulation, that characterize the inflammatory process, we should only have an incomplete idea of the changes that were taking place. Since the time of Galen, who lived two hundred years after Christ, _inflammation_ was recognized by four cardinal symptoms, namely redness (RUBER), _swelling_ (TUMOR), _pain_ (DOLOR) and the increased temperature (CALOR). To these modern pathologists have added a fifth symptom, which is lessened or diminished function (FUNCTIO LÆSA). The above five cardinal symptoms can be established in the majority of the acute stages of inflammation: in the chronic or subacute variety, one or the other symptom may be absent, or so obscured as to escape notice.