SEPTICAEMIA IN RABBITS. 369 



recording his results, "my saliva/' injected in such 

 or such an amount, produces, etc. 



Koch gives the following account of the occur- 

 rence of this interesting disease in the course of 

 his experimental inoculations: 



44 After injection of putrid infusion of meat into 

 rabbits, I have twice obtained a general infection of 

 another sort in which metastatic deposits do not occur 

 [as is the case in the disease described by him as pyaemia 

 in rabbits], and which I would therefore describe, in 

 contrast to the foregoing, as septicaemia. This infusion, 

 like the putrid fluids used in the earlier experiments, 

 contained numbers of bacteria of the most various forms. 

 When injected under the skin of the back of a rabbit it 

 produces an extensive putrid suppuration of the sub- 

 cutaneous cellular tissue, and the animal dies in three 

 da}'s and a half. At the ichorous spot, which must, on 

 account of its size, be looked upon as the immediate 

 cause of death (owing to absorption of poisonous material 

 in solution), the same variety of bacteric forms was 

 present as in meat infusion. At the border of this spot 

 the cellular tissue was infiltrated with a slightly turbid 

 watery fluid which contrasted strikingly with the brown- 

 ish ichor in the vicinity of the place of injection. In 

 this oedema fluid great numbers of micrococci of con- 

 siderable size and of an oval form were almost the only 

 organism observed. In the blood also similar micrococci 

 were found, though only in small numbers. Further, 

 in the papilli of the kidney and in the greatly enlarged 

 spleen, some of the small veins were blocked for short 

 distances with these oval micrococci. 



4 ' Two drops of this oedematous fluid were now in- 

 jected under the skin of the back of a second rabbit. 

 The animal died in twenty-four hours, and here, in the 



24 



