SEPTIC INTOXICATION IN ANIMALS. 117 



in septicaemic subjects fluidity of the blood and softening of the 

 tissues. That these changes were not necessarily caused by the 

 action of living microorganisms was determined by experiments, 

 as the introduction of putrid blood, or meat infusion that had been 

 boiled for a considerable length of time, produced toxic symptoms, 

 and when a sufficient quantity was used, death and identical patho- 

 logical changes in the blood and tissues as in cases of true sepsis. 

 A step in advance in the study of the action of putrid substances 

 was made by the discovery of the ptomaines in an exhumed body 

 by Selmi in 1872. The ptomaines isolated by Selmi were volatile 

 alkaloids which were separated from a body some time after death. 

 Gautier, independently of Selmi, and about the same time, made 

 the same observations, but believed that the toxic substances were 

 volatile, and that in their action they resembled the narcotics mor- 

 phine and atropine, and were more closely allied to the alkaloid 

 extracted from poisonous mushrooms. 



Semmer (" Putride Intoxication und septische Infection, Metas- 

 tatische Abscesse und Pysemie," Virchow's Archiv, B. Ixxxiii.) 

 gives an account of the action of septic substances as studied expe- 

 rimentally by Guttmann in the pathological department of the 

 Veterinary School at Dorpat. The experiments were made with 

 putrid substances, products of inflammation, septic blood, and 

 cultivations of septic bacteria. These researches showed that a 

 chemical, putrid poison is formed in putrefying substances, and that 

 a certain quantity of such poison produces symptoms of sepsis and 

 death in animals. The blood of animals killed with such putrid 

 poison was found to possess no infective qualities, and the usual 

 putrefactive bacteria are destroyed in the blood, and only appear 

 again after the death of the animal. It was claimed, even at this 

 time, that the bacteria elaborate the poison, as experiments made 

 with cultivations grown outside the body produced the same effects. 

 Another conclusion arrived at was that putrid substances adminis- 

 tered subcutaueously may produce gangrene, phlegmonous inflam- 

 mation, or erysipelas, according to the stage of the putrefaction, 

 temperature, culture-soil, etc. The infective material was never 

 found in the blood, but always in the products of the inflammation. 

 A sharp distinction was made between contagious septicaemia and 

 putrid intoxication. It was clearly stated that true septicaemia is 

 always preceded by a stage of incubation, and that its contagium is 

 destroyed by boiling, putrefaction, and germicides. 



Bergmann (Das putride Gift, etc., Dorpat, 1866) isolated from 

 putrid blood a crystallizable chemical substance which he called 

 sepsin, which when injected into animals produced a complexus of 

 symptoms resembling true sepsis, with this important difference, 

 however, that as soon as the toxic substance reached the circulation 



