THE BACTERIA IN SURGICAL LESIONS. 179 
the humors which contain them, without, however, 
as a rule, exercising any toxic action upon the 
organism; 5. The author is far from rejecting the 
possible intervention of vibrios in the pathology 
of purulent infection; and he explains the happy 
exemption of infants from septicemia, in a majority 
of cases, by the fact that these organisms are not 
found in the pus of abscesses in young children. 
The conclusions of the memoir of M. Bergeron 
were the object of earnest discussions. According 
to the accepted theory, there ought never to be a 
development of organisms, unless the germs had 
been introduced from the air; if, then, we admit 
the correctness of these observations, the explana- 
tion given by Pasteur breaks down. Let us add, 
that many times, by the bedside of the patient, 
the microscope has furnished results absolutely 
contradictory. Sometime before M. Bouloumié 
had formally established, as the result of long con- 
tinued researches, that pus coming from any col- 
lection whatever, not in communication, directly 
or indirectly, with an open wound, never contained 
organized elements, mobile or motionless, which 
can be considered as microzoa, or microphytes, 
except some highly-refractive moving points, often 
joined together in pairs. 
We dare not say that the long discussions to 
which these communications have given rise have 
thrown any light upon the grave problems which 
they have attempted to resolve. Let it suffice 
for us to have pointed out these different points 
of view. 
