402 TIMOTHY RICHARDS LEWIS. 



became evident contemporaneously with the advent of very minute 

 spherical bodies^ the cousequenceSj as Colin believes, of the 

 altered character of the blood. i 



It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the poisonous pro- 

 perties of septinous blood and of other decomposing animal 

 solutions gradually disappear towards the third or fourth day, a 

 fact which is scarcely reconcilable with the doctrine that the 

 poison resides in the apparently almost imperishable 'spores' of 

 the bacilli which existed during the earlier stages of decomposition. 

 A like feature characterises the virus of splenic disease, of small- 

 pox, and of syphilis. Hiller,~ in summarising the results of 

 filtration of septinous fluids, writes that the most decisive ex- 

 periments have demonstrated that after filtration through finely 

 porous material, such as charcoal, porous earthenware, compressed 

 wadding, &c., until the fluids have been shown to be absolutely 

 free from visible molecules of every description, they are, never- 

 theless, still competent to induce all the symptoms which 

 characterised their action before such filtration. These results 

 Hiller says, were arrived at by Panum, Bergmann, Weidenbaum 

 Wolfl", Kiissner, and others. 



To the first-named of these observers belongs the merit of 

 having contributed some of the earliest and most valuable ob- 

 servations which have been, hitherto, recorded in connection with 

 the nature of the poison existing in certain solutions of decom- 

 posing animal matter. Panum's researches were published so 

 far back as 1855, but having originally appeared in Danish they 

 had for several years been to a great extent overlooked. They 

 were brought more prominently into notice on their publication in 

 1874 in ' Virchow's Archiv.' In 1875 ^ Dr. Cunningham and 

 myself drew attention to these experiments, as we have found that 

 the results of observations made by us, with a like object, based 

 on a series of experiments which included the inoculation and 

 dissection of about 170 dogs, were, in so far as they were com- 

 parable, almost in complete accord with those which had been 

 obtained by this distinguished experimentalist. 



Panum found that the coagulum produced by boiling a sep- 

 tinous fluid was more virulent than the fluid itself. The principal 

 facts demonstrated by him may be thus summarised :• — 



(1) — That the perfectly clear fluid which may be obtained by 

 filtering solutions of putrefying animal substances through several 



1 " Nouvelles recherches sur I'actiou des niatieres putrides et sur la 

 septicemie." ' Bulletin de I'Academie,' October, 1873 ; cited by Birch- 

 Hirschfeld, 1. c, p. 174;. 



2 " Ueber putrides Gift," ' Centralblatt fiir Chirurgie,' Kos. 10, 11, and 

 12,1876. 



^ ' Cholera : Microscopical and Physiological Hesearches,' Series IT. 



