234 MICRO-ORGANISMS AND DISEASE. [CHAP. 



disturbance is noticed, severe symptoms and death only 

 following after injection of considerable quantities, such as 

 several cubic centimetres of putrid fluid. There is a priori 

 no reason why something like putrid intoxication should not 

 occur as a pyaemic infection in the human subject ; if, for 

 instance, at an extensive wound, e.g. after amputation of a 

 limb, a large surface of suppurating tissue is established, on 

 which, as is well known, numbers of putrefactive organisms 

 are capable of growing, it is possible and quite probable, that 

 here these organisms produce the septic poison, which when 

 absorbed into the system in sufficient quantities produces 

 septic intoxication. From this affection septicaemia proper, 

 due to absorption of a specific organism by a small open 

 wound or a vein, which increases within the body, and 

 therefore is a living, growing, and self-multiplying, en- 

 tity producing septicaemia, must be carefully distin- 

 guished. 



These putrefactive processes must be distinguished from 

 certain fermentative processes, in the course of which by 

 introducinga definite micro-organism zymogenic organism 

 into a definite substance, definite chemical products are pro- 

 duced. Thus the torula cervisiae or saccharomyces intro- 

 duced into a solution containing sugar, produces alcoholic 

 fermentation, i.e. oxidation and splitting up of sugar into 

 alcohol and carbonic acid. 



The bacterium lactis introduced into substances containing 

 lactic sugar, moist, or grape sugar, produces by oxidation a 

 conversion of the sugar into lactic acid and carbonic acid (?). 

 A micrococcus (see a former chapter) produces, according to 

 Pasteur, the conversion of dextrose into a sort of gum, called 

 by Bechamp viscose, and recognised by Pasteur as the cause 

 of the viscous change of wine and beer. The urea in the 

 urine is converted by the micrococcus ureae (Pasteur) into 



