AVENUES OF EXIT OF INFECTIOUS AGENTS. 165 



Boils, carbuncles, many pure and mixed cutaneous 

 suppurations, and suppurations found elsewhere in 

 the body, also come under this head. The guinea- 

 worm discharges its embryos and also makes its own 

 exit in a cutaneous suppuration which it excites. 



In puerperal fever (child-bed fever), the infecting 

 micro-organism is discharged in the vaginal secretion, 

 or from such other suppurating foci as may be estab- 

 lished during the illness. In scarlet fever, small-pox, 

 typhoid fever, etc., when suppurations ensue, the dis- 

 charges contain the infectious agents. 



The principal communicable specific infectious dis- 

 eases of the eye in which the specific micro-organisms 

 are discharged in pus, are gonorrhoeal ophthalmia, 

 catarrhal conjunctivitis, diphtheritic conjunctivitis, 

 and trachoma (Egyptian ophthalmia). 



