282 AN ADDRESS ON THE TREATMENT OF WOUNDS 



water, in the third a dilution with a hundred parts of the water, and in the 

 fourth a thousandfold dilution. I then exposed the jugular vein of a donkey 

 in five places, with antiseptic precautions, leaving four intervening portions of 

 the vessel intact and covered with the integument, and introduced into each 

 undisturbed portion of vein one of the glass tubes with the septic rag in its 

 interior, strong ligatures of string purified with carbolic solution being applied 

 tightly as each tube was introduced, so as to form four venous compartments 

 or capsules quite distinct from one another, and consisting of vascular tissue 

 healthy at the outset. 



After three days the animal was killed, and the venous compartments 

 examined. In all four putrefaction had occurred within the glass tube ; but 

 the state of the coagulum outside the tube was extremely interesting. I must 

 content myself on the present occasion with referring to the condition of the 

 first compartment, or that which had received the undiluted putrid blood. 

 Immediately around the glass tube the clot was so much softened by putre- 

 faction as to be almost diffluent. But next to the greatly thickened wall of 

 the vein, and forming an adherent lining to it, was a layer of firm coagulum, 

 in some parts about a quarter of an inch thick, resembling to the naked eye 

 a perfectly recent clot. Before introducing the tubes into the vein I had drawn 

 blood from it, with antiseptic precautions, into a number of purified stoppered 

 bottles containing each the same quantity of septic liquid as the tubes received 

 (i-20th minim) of various degrees of dilution, from the unmixed putrid blood 

 to a mixture with 100,000 parts of boiled water. The bottles received each 

 about as much blood as a venous compartment contained, and they were kept 

 at the temperature of the body. Three out of four which had received the 

 ioo,ooo-fold dilution, as well as two kept uninoculated as standards of com- 

 parison, remained permanently free from putrefaction,^ but those inoculated 

 with larger proportions of the septic material putrefied, and those which received 

 the undiluted putrid blood were, at the time when the vein was examined, in 

 a state of utter decomposition, presenting a very striking contrast with the 

 apparently unchanged layer next the wall of the vein. 



But unaltered as this layer appeared to the naked eye, the microscope 

 showed it to be in reality a very different structure from a recent clot. It 

 proved to be teeming with cells of new formation, far more numerous than the 

 white corpuscles of the blood, and differing from them altogether in characters ; 

 being as a rule larger, and often of great size with pellucid contents, and having 

 as their nuclei bodies more or less closely resembling pus corpuscles. On the 

 day after the death of the animal and removal of the vein, I continued the 



* The last observation was made nine days after the commencement of the experiment. 



