46 Chapter III 



funiish the bacteria that developed on Brunner's plates. Neverthe- 

 less, even in the case of pathogenic organisms, which swarm in the 

 blood, the sweat is usually free from them. This has been shown by 

 Krikliwy^ in the case of cats inoculated with anthrax whose sweat, 

 in spite of the passage of numerous bacteria into the circulation, 

 contained none. 



Micro-organisms, then, after their entrance into the refractory 



animal, are not eliminated by any of the excretory channels which 



serve for the eliaiination of many of the soluble poisons. It was 



necessary therefore to seek some other process capable of affording 



an explanation of the disappearance of the micro-organisms which so 



often and by such varied means make their way into the interior of 



a resistant organism. For it is a well-established fact that in these 



cases the micro-organisms do disappear completely. This has been 



observed so often that it is unnecessary to offer any demonstration of 



the fact. Perhaps in the refractory organism the micro-organisms 



undergo the fate of the foreign bodies which penetrate, or which are 



introduced, into the circulation. It has long been known, thanks 



especially to the work of Hoffmann and Recklinghausen^, and of 



Ponfick^, that particles of carmine or vermilion when injected into 



the blood are deposited in several organs. They are found in the 



spleen, the lymphatic glands and the bone-marrow. A certain number 



of these foreign particles may even be fixed in the liver and kidneys, 



but, instead of passing into the bile and the urine, they remain 



lodged in the interstitial tissue of the organs. The observers just 



cited noted that the coloured granules do not remain long in either 



the blood or the lymph but will be found in the interior of the 



cellular elements. These granules persist for wrecks without any 



appreciable modification, differing in this from the micro-organisms 



which, as a rule, after several days or even after a few hours, disappear 



from the refractory organism. This disappearance might be more 



justly compared to the resorption of corpuscular elements which 



[50] results in a more or less complete atrophy. The facts concerning 



the resorption of pus, of extravasated blood, of the mucosa of the 



uterus in pregnancy, etc., have long been known, and it is among 



these that one should seek analogies with the disappearance of the 



micro-organisms. When bacteria of various species are injected into 



1 Vratch (in Russian), St Petersburg, 1896, Nos. 8, 12. 

 ^ Centralhl.f. d. med. Wissensch., Berlin, 1867, No. 31. 

 » Virchow's Archiv, 1869, Bd. xlviii, S. 1. 



