150 ORGANISED FLUIDS. 



they can be conveyed bodily from one part of the system to 

 another, clearly show that any such translation of the matter 

 of an abscess as that presumed is an occurrence beyond the 

 range of possibility. 



Abscesses may indeed be re-absorbed into the system, as 

 daily observation teaches us to be the case, and other purulent 

 depositions take place subsequently to the resorption of the 

 matter of the first abscess ; but the elements of pus, and as- 

 suredly its solid constituents, are not carried into the con- 

 stitution bodily and without alteration"; the corpuscles doubt- 

 less become disaggregated, and in all probability reduced to 

 a fluid state previous to absorption, so that it cannot be the 

 same purulent matter which constitutes the pus of the sup- 

 posed metastatic abscess. 



The simultaneous or consecutive occurrence of abscesses 

 in different parts of the body, may be satisfactorily explained 

 by reference to the condition of the system, or perhaps more 

 immediately of the blood itself, which is evidently charged 

 with purulent matter, and of which it relieves itself by the 

 formation of abscesses. 



VENEREAL VIBRIOS. 



M. Donne has discovered in the pus of syphilitic primitive 

 ulcerations, and of chancres which have not been treated with 

 topical applications, numerous vibrios of excessive tenuity. 

 (See Plate XIII. fig. 6.) 



These vibrios are not encountered in the pus of secondary 

 chancres, nor even in that of buboes, which, according to the 

 experiments of M. Kicord, is capable of giving origin to a 

 chancre by inoculation. 



Neither are they to be met with in the pus proceeding 

 from wounds, nor in foetid pus altered by the contact of the 

 air. 



Again, in the instances in which suppuration has been 

 artificially excited around the edge of the glans penis, the 

 ordinary situation of primary syphilitic ulcerations, the vibrios 



