HISTORY. Ill 



putrid blood, and this he believes to be quite harmless, while the 

 remaining two possess pyogenic properties. 



No. 1. Large rods, which, cultivated on nutrient agar-agar, form 

 an irregular sinuous streak, with a mucilaginous appearance. They 

 grow also very readily on blood-serum, and all cultivations yield 

 the odor of rotting kitchen-refuse. It is not pathogenic. 



No. 2. Rods shorter and thinner than No. 1. They develop 

 very rapidly on agar-agar, forming transparent drops, which be- 

 come gray. They were isolated from a patient suffering from pro- 

 fusely sweating feet. The cultivations yielded a characteristic odor 

 similar to the last. They are pathogenic. 



No. 3. Hods isolated from the putrid marrow of a case of com- 

 pound fracture, cultivated on agar-agar ; an ash-gray, almost liquid 

 culture is developed, with a strong characteristic odor of putrefac- 

 tion. Injected into the knee-joint or abdomen of a rabbit, they 

 cause snppurative inflammation. 



According to Chaveau ( u Septicemie gangreneuse," Publ. de 

 I'Acad. de Med., No. 34, 1884), the microbe of septicaemia is iden- 

 tical with the vibrion septique described by Pasteur. Both of these 

 authors claim that this microbe is anaerobic, and Chaveau only 

 succeeded in cultivating it in a vacuum. He made many experi- 

 ments on guinea-pigs, sheep, and horses, by injecting the liquid 

 contents of bullae which he found in cases of septic gangrene. In 

 doses of one-fifth of a drop in guinea-pigs, and from two to four 

 drops in horses, it produced rapid death. In all cases the necropsy 

 showed at the point of injection localized oedema and turbid serum 

 in the peritoneal, pleura!, and pericardial cavities. In the fluids, 

 the microbe could always be demonstrated under the microscope. 

 The disease could be reproduced in other animals by inoculation 

 with the serous fluid contained in any of the serous cavities. The 

 microbe proved less virulent when injected directly into the circu- 

 lation. All animals which recovered after intravenous injection 

 were protected against any further subcutaneous inoculations. 



Gautier and others have more abundantly proved that not only 

 after death, but even during life, the animal organism, by virtue of 

 its physiological powers, is able to elaborate the alkaloids to which 

 the name of leucoma'ines has been applied, bodies which are, many 

 of them, essentially toxic in their properties, and which resemble so 

 closely the poisonous cadaveric alkaloids to which Selmi first called 

 attention. 



Watson Cheyne (" Report on Micrococci in Relation to Wounds, 

 Abscesses, and Septic Processes," British MedicalJournal, 1884, pp. 

 553, 559, 645) asserts that the microbes of sepsis only grow in loco, 

 and act by producing toxic ptomaines, or if they occur in the blood, 



