396 



LOUIS PASTEUR 



chains, also contained the small pyogenic vibrio which I 

 describe under the name organism of pus in the Note I 

 published with Messrs. Joubert and Chamberland on the 

 thirtieth of April, 1878.' 



Interpretation of the disease and of the death. After 

 confinement, the pus that always naturally forms in the in- 

 jured parts of the uterus instead of remaining pure be- 

 comes contaminated with microscopic organisms from out- 

 side, notably the organism in long chains and the pyogenic 

 vibrio. These organisms pass into the peritoneal cavity 

 through the tubes or by other channels, and some of them 

 into the blood, probably by the lymphatics. The resorption 

 of the pus, always extremely easy and prompt when it is 

 pure, becomes impossible through the presence of the para- 

 sites, whose entrance must be prevented by all possible 

 means from the moment of confinement. 



Second observation. The fourteenth of March, a woman 

 died of puerperal fever at the Lariboisiere hospital; the 

 abdomen was distended before death. 



Pus was found in abundance by a peritoneal puncture and 

 was sowed; so also was blood from a vein in the arm. The 

 culture of pus yielded the long chains noted in the preceding 

 observation and also the small pyogenic vibrio. The cul- 

 ture from the blood contained only the long chains. 



Third observation. The seventeenth of May, 1879, a 

 woman, three days past confinement, was ill, as well as the 

 child she was nursing. The lochia were full of the pyogenic 

 vibrio and of the organism of furuncles, although there was 

 but a small proportion of the latter. The milk and the lochia 

 were sowed. The milk gave the organism in long chains of 

 granules, and the lochia only the pus organism. The mother 

 died, and there was no autopsy. 



On May twenty-eighth, a rabbit was inoculated under the 

 skin of the abdomen with five drops of the preceding culture 

 of the pyogenic vibrio. The days following an enormous 

 abscess formed which opened spontaneously on the fourth of 

 June. An abundantly cheesy pus came from it. About the 

 abscess there was extensive induration. On the eighth of 

 June, the opening of the abscess was larger, the suppuration 



See preceding paper. 



