66 G. F. DOWDESWELL. 



The Micro-organisms which occur in Septicaemia. By G- 

 F. DowDEswELL, M.A., F.L.S., F.C.S., &c. (With Plate 

 VII.) 



Our knowledge of the minute organisms which occur in 

 various infective diseases has been greatly extended during the 

 last few years, since Dr. Eobert Koch, now of Berlin, published 

 his investigations on the 'Etiology of Anthrax or Splenic 

 Fever/ which gave a fresh impetus to this study, and formed a 

 model for subsequent observations, though the actual relations 

 of these organisms to disease are, as yet, far from being defini- 

 tively settled. 



Septic infection, putrid intoxication, or septicBeraia, as it has 

 been termed by former writers, is an affection the parasitical 

 origin of which has been warmly contested from the time of the 

 first recorded observations on the subject by Gaspard and 

 Majendie in 1822 and 1823, succeeded by the more systematic 

 investigations of Panum, and subsequently, a continual flow of 

 other writers both in France and Germany, without, however, 

 adding much to the results attained by the latter observer until 

 the last few years, during which the subject has been greatly 

 elucidated. As to the distinction between the different affections 

 formerly included under the terms above mentioned, it may 

 suffice here to say that the disease occasioned by the absorption 

 by the living animal of large quantities of putrid or septic^ matter, 

 is not a specific parasitical affection, inasmuch as Bacteria, though 

 constantly present in the tissues or organs of the affected animal, 

 are merely so incidentally, and are not the true contagium, the 

 efficient cause of the symptoms ; this has been designated by 

 Dr. Burdon Sanderson as septic infection, in distinction to specific 

 septicaemia, a disease which may be occasioned by inoculation 

 wdth the most minute quantity of septic matter, and which is 

 due to the multiplication and development in the living animal 

 of a minute form of protophyte, and hence is properly a specific 

 parasitical aS'ection. This disease, which I here term simply 

 septicaemia, so nearly resembles anthrax in many respects that 

 to distinguish between them is often difficult, and there is no 

 doubt that the two have been frequently confounded by some of 

 the earlier observers : their statements, too, of the organisms 

 which occur in it are very vague, so that no conclusions can be 

 formed on the subject. It is probable that in many of these 



' i.e. toxical or infective, in which sense the term is now used [by 

 pathologists, though originally it merely signified putrescent, ia accordance 

 with its etymology. 



