EXTENSION OP THE GERM THEORY 395 



III. On puerperal fever. First observation. On the 

 twelfth of March, 1878, Dr. Hervieux was good enough to 

 admit me to his service in the Maternity to visit a woman 

 delivered some days before and seriously ill with puerperal 

 fever. The lochia were extremely fetid. I found them 

 full of micro-organisms of many kinds. A small amount of 

 blood was obtained from a puncture on the index finger of 

 the left hand, (the finger being first properly washed and 

 dried with a sterile towel,) and then sowed in chicken 

 bouillon. The culture remained sterile during the follow- 

 ing days. 



The thirteenth, more blood was taken from a puncture in 

 the finger and this time growth occurred. As death took 

 place on the sixteenth of March at six in the morning, it 

 seems that the blood contained a microscopic parasite at 

 least three days before. 



The fifteenth of March, eighteen hours before death, blood 

 from a needle-prick in the left foot was used. This culture 

 also was fertile. 



The first culture, of March thirteenth, contained only the 

 organism of furuncles; the next one, that of the fifteenth, 

 contained an organism resembling that of furunculosis, but 

 which always differed enough to make it easy usually to 

 distinguish it. In this way ; whilst the parasite of furuncles 

 is arranged in pairs, very rarely in chains of three or four 

 elements, the new one, that of the culture of the fifteenth, 

 occurs in long chains, the number of cells in each being 

 indefinite. The chains are flexible and often appear as 

 little tangled packets like tangled strings of pearls. 



The autopsy was performed on the seventeenth at two 

 o'clock. There was a large amount of pus in the peri- 

 toneum. It was sowed with all possible precautions. Blood 

 from the basilic and femoral veins was also sowed. So 

 also was pus from the mucous surface of the uterus, from 

 the tubes, and finally that from a lymphatic in the uterine 

 wall. These are the results of these cultures: in all there 

 were the long chains of cells just spoken of above, and no- 

 where any mixture of other organisms, except in the culture 

 from the peritoneal pus, which, in addition to the long 



This has been demonstrated, as is well known. Translator. 



