Excerpt from First Principles of Medicine It does not appear to me that I used too strong an expression for merly in speaking of the confusion which has existed in medicine; and, as an example, I need only refer to the striking fact noticed in this work, that the two words, inflammation and irritation, which are most frequently in the mouths of medical men, are up to this day perpetually used in a double or equivocal sense. Inflammation is correctly used to imply disease, and incorrectly to signify the pro cess by which the damage done by the disease is repaired (pp. 58 Irritation is perpetually incorrectly used to signify a state of disease, as it can only be correctly applied to the process where by any thing irritates, annoys, or over-excites a part the irritant, irritating thing, whatever that be, by its operation (irritation) pro duces in the part morbid sensibility. One great Objection to using the term irritation to imply disease is, that irritation (the act of ir ritating) produces sometimes inflammation, and sometimes only morbid sensibility; but, according to the Old phraseology, irrita ti on produces irritation and inflammation produces sympathetic irritation and constitutional irritation, and sympathetic irritation and constitutional irritation arise from local irritation, &c. &c. In order to avoid this equivoque, I determined, in the present edi tion, to adopt the term morbid sensibility as the name for the diseas ed state usually implied by irritation, and to use the word irritation only in its proper sense and wherever the word irritation occurs in other works implying disease, it will be found that mordid sensibility may be substituted for it. In this alteration of a term, I consider that I have done the stu dent good service, rendering my own explanations more clear, and also those of other writers, by giving him an elucidation of the word irritation where it occurs as a disease in the valuable works of such authors as Sir A. Cooper, Travers, &c., and enabling him at a glance to distinguish whether it be mentioned as a cause or a symp tom. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.