Microbic Diseases Individually Considered. 157 



ceived and clearly expressed this manner of view in 

 several reports and discussions. (1) 



He recognized in these diseases actual points of 

 consanguinity which led him to refer them all to the 

 same stock and to regard them as children of the 

 same family, " The septoid stock or family, also called 

 septicaemia^ but better designated septose, the septic or 

 jmtiid diathesis." If the discovery of the special 

 germs of most of these diseases no more allows of 

 belief in their identity, it removes all doubts as to 

 their analogy. 



The name saprcemia has been reserved for septicae- 

 mias engendered by microbes which develop a strong 

 odor of putrefaction. 



Septicsemia was formerly considered only as a com- 

 plication of wounds, but it can occur independent of 

 all traumatism, the agents which occasion it pene- 

 trating by one of the natural surfaces without the aid 

 of any solution of continuity, as, for instance, by the 

 digestive, respiratory, genital, urinary passages, etc. 

 There are, therefore, surgical septiccernias and medical 

 septiccemias. 



When septicaemia develops in consequence of a 

 traumatism we see in the latter important changes 

 supervene which indicate the infection of the wound 

 by germs : the secretion becomes sero-sanguinolent, 

 often fetid, the granulations become less firm, pulta- 

 ceous, often purple ; the neighboring tissues swell 

 and become the seat of an inflammatory oedema, fre- 

 quently progressive ; these local lesions may entail 



(1) See Annales de medicine Veterinaire, 1874, p. 502; 1875, p. 

 94, and 1876, p. 115. 



