240 MICRO-ORGANISMS AND DISEASE. [CHAP. 



various internal places in consequence of emboli carried 

 from an inflammatory focus to which micrococci or bacilli 

 from the outer world have access, e.g. the skin, alimentary 

 canal, respiratory organs, these internal places or metastases 

 would harbour the same organisms, and as soon as disintegra- 

 tion abscess, caseation, or necrosis takes place in these 

 metastases, also the imported organisms would multiply to a 

 great extent, the tissue being shut out from the circulation 

 and practically dead. 



All this I say is not difficult of explanation if we bear in 

 mind that the products of an inflammatory focus to which 

 organisms have ready access from the outer world become 

 themselves a ready nidus for these organisms ; and when 

 some of these products are absorbed and taken into the 

 general circulation to act as emboli and thus to set up 

 inflammation in distant regions, the organisms, embedded 

 in and shielded by those products from any destructive 

 action the living blood in the circulation may be capable of 

 exerting, are thus transported to the new foci of inflamma- 

 tion and disintegration, resulting from the emboli. All this 

 is self-evident, and does not require more proof than what 

 is already known, and it follows from such considerations 

 that the presence of micrococci and bacilli in the tissues of 

 internal organs, in severe cases of disease, when some of the 

 organs become disorganised before the actual death of the 

 body, or in secondary foci of severe inflammation and 

 necrosis, may have no connection whatever with the original 

 cause of the disease or necrosis, but may be, and probably is, 

 simply due to a transportation and immigration of non- 

 pathogenic putrefactive organisms. 



A most striking case of this kind I met with in mice dead 

 of swine-plague ; the bowels were severely inflamed, and in 

 the liver there were present necrotic patches, an almost 



