SEPTIC INTOXICATION IN ANIMALS. 121 



has been furnished by Tiegel (Dissertation, Bern, 1871). By in- 

 jecting putrid fluids into animals he produced true progressive sep- 

 ticaemia. He then resorted to filtration of the fluid through clay 

 cells, so as to separate from it any organic germs it might contain, 

 and showed that fluid, thus treated, was rendered perfectly sterile, 

 and that, when injected, it produced only putrid intoxication and 

 no progressive sepsis. 



Binne ("Der Eiterungs process uud seine Metastasen," Archivf. 

 klin. Chirurgie, B. xxxix. S. 21) asserts that the chemical product 

 of pus-microbes alone, as well as sterilized putrid fluids, never pro- 

 duces metastases. He sterilized fluid cultures of the staphylococcus 

 pyogenes aureus after filtration, and injected directly into the blood- 

 vessels of rabbits as much as four grammes of this fluid, and in 

 dogs increased the dose to fourteen grammes. Many of the animals 

 showed slight symptoms of toxasmia, somnolence, diarrhoea, and 

 collapse. By using still larger doses the symptoms were intensified 

 and the animals died. Metastatic abscesses were never found. 



Hoffa ( Verh. der Deutschen Gesettschaft f. Chirurgie, 1889) has re- 

 cently made some very interesting observations on the immediate cause 

 of death in rabbits inoculated with a pure culture of Koch-Gaff ky's 

 bacillus. The animals were inoculated at the base of the ear, and 

 immediately after death the ptomaines were isolated by Brieger's 

 method. In every instance he obtained a substance called methyl- 

 guanidin, which on chemical analysis was shown to consist, of the 

 formula C 2 H 7 N 3 . When this substance was injected into rabbits 

 it produced symptoms of intoxication which resembled in every 

 respect those produced by the injection of the pure cultures 

 obtained from septicaemic rabbits. As methylguanidin could not 

 be produced from the cadavers of healthy animals by the same 

 method, Hoffa naturally came to the conclusion that it was a product 

 of the bacteria, and that death was to be attributed to the produc- 

 tion of this substance in the tissues of the infected animals. The 

 source of methylguanidin in the body is kreatin, and the bacteria 

 must possess the property of oxidation, as kreatin is transformed 

 into methylguanidin only by oxidation. 



Septicaemia in man corresponds with the two forms produced, 

 experimentally, in animals : 1. True progressive septicaemia, caused 

 by the introduction of microbes into the tissues, where they mul- 

 tiply and later reach the blood ; where mural implantation and 

 capillary embolism and thrombosis take place, which directly inter- 

 fere with the proper nutrition and function of important organs, 

 and where the septic intoxication is caused by the formation of 

 ptomaines in the organism. For this form of sepsis Neelsen (Ver- 

 handl. der Deutschen Gesettschaft f. Chirurgie, 1884), has suggested 

 the name acute mycosis of the blood, to distinguish it from the 



