Excellent Condition. Collector quality, leather bound edition with gold accents on end pages. Complete with editors notes insert and pristine page maker. 1982 Limited Edition printing.

Hunter’s epoch-making last work, in which he published for the first time his observations on war injuries made during the Seven Years’ War along with his studies of inflammation, which were of prime importance to pathology. 

Hunter was ahead of his time in recognizing and describing the three basic factors of wound pathology: (1) that an external agent in the air, and not the air itself, is a factor in wound inflammation; (2) that a good blood supply is essential in maintaining the natural defenses of the body; and (3) that the presence of devitalized tissue in a gunshot or other deep and contused wound prevents the wound from healing and promotes sepsis. He advocated a conservative system of deep wound management in which the natural functions of suppuration and drainage would be allowed to operate; this policy made sense in the context of 18th-century surgical practice, in which the causes of infection were unknown and antiseptic practices unheard-of. With regard to inflammation, Hunter recognized it as one of the most widespread phenomena in pathology and classified it into three types: (1) adhesive, in which adherence of contiguous parts causes localization of disease; (2) suppurative, in which pus is formed; and (3), ulcerative, in which tissue loss occurs through the action of the lymphatics.