MICROPHYTES FOUND IN THE BLOOD, 403 



layers of filtering paper would induce the characteristic symptoms 

 of the same kind as the unfiltered material. 



(2) — That boiling such a fluid for even 11 hours would not 

 materially impair its toxic pro])erties. 



(3) — That although an alcoholic extract of such a fluid proved 

 to be inert, the virulent action of a watery extract of the same 

 fluid was very intense. 



Panum therefore concludes that a fluid which can retain its 

 specific property after being filtered, boiled, evaporated to dryness, 

 and the residue digested in cold and in boiling alcohol, then re- 

 dissolved and again filtered, cannot owe this property to living 

 organisms of any kind. 



In 1865 Dr. W. B. Eichardson showed that the sero-san- 

 guineous fluid from the peritoneal cavity of a person suffering 

 from pyaemia would communicate fatal disease from one animal 

 to another in a direct series, and that the poison (designated 

 '^ septine ") which eff'ected this could be made to combine with 

 acids so as to form salts which retained the poisonous qualities of 

 the original substance.^ A few years later (1868), Bergmann 

 succeeded in obtaining apparently a similar substance and named 

 it Sepsiu.^ This poison induced symptoms of a like character to 

 what are induced by putrefying solutions, and was frequently 

 even more fatal, in very small doses. Still it appears to reproduce 

 symptoms exactly similar to the original material, in this respect 

 diff'ering slightly from Panum's '^ putrid extract," which repro- 

 duces the ordinary symptoms of septic poisoning without any 

 modification whatever. 



To Pasteur and his adherents, who ascribe what may be almost 

 termed supernatural powers of resistance to the '' resting spores " 

 of anthracoid and other diseases, the facts adduced in the fore- 

 going paragraphs can carry but little weight. But another 

 series of phenomena have been recorded which point in the same 

 direction. It has been shown that the living tissues of the body 

 will under certain conditions, when irritated by means of purely 

 chemical irritants — such, for example, as a strong solution of 

 iodine or liquor ammonia — secrete a fluid which, when transferred 

 from animal to animal, proves not one whit less virulent in its 

 properties than an exudation which has resulted primarily from 

 the introduction into the system of material which has swarmed 

 with bacilh. Observations to this effect have been published by 

 many observers, and Dr. Cunningham and myself have placed on 

 record that we found a large number of bacteria in the blood of 

 a dog which had died as a result of such chemical irritants. 



' 'The Laucet/ April 3rd, 1875, p. 490. 



2 ' Centralbl. f. d. medicin. Wissensch.,' 1S6S, p. 497 ; cited by Dr. 

 Arnold Hiller, op. cit. 



