31icrohic Diseases Individually Considered. 153 



organism should suffer from any serious disturbance, 

 or if, in consequence of a special local alteration, these 

 germs should penetrate in large numbers into the 

 blood, their influence will cease to remain limited to 

 their original focus and we will see the irruption of 

 that formidable disease, pyaemia. This disease is not 

 absolutely dependent upon the existence of a wound; 

 it can originate in the course of a purulent visceral 

 inflammation or even appear spontaneously. In this 

 last case the microbes come either from the mucous 

 membrane or from an old latent focus. 



Besides the immediate general phenomena, such as 

 those of a peculiarly intense fever, the arrest and 

 multiplication of the pyogenic germs in different 

 parts of the circulatory apparatus lead to the produc- 

 tion of metastatic abscesses and purulent collections 

 in the natural cavities. The pyogenic germs com- 

 municate to the blood corpuscles a certain degree of 

 viscidity; the latter become agglutinated and, as a 

 result, embolisms occur in the small arterioles of one 

 or more organs : kidney, liver, lungs, muscles, etc. 

 The microbes arrested at these embolisms form the 

 starting point of so many foci of suppuration. 



In reality pysemia is rarely simple ; along with 



the bacteria of pus the blood generally receives other 



inicrobes from wounds exposed to the air, and there 



results a concomitant disease of a septicsemic order. 



We shall see, further, that the organisms of pus maj', 



under certain circumstances, give, of themselves, a 



pure septicaemia. 



Septiccemia. 



In a general way this name is given to the patho- 

 logical condition which follows penetration of putrid 



