EXTENSION OF THE GERM THEORY 397 



active. Near its border was another abscess, evidently joined 

 with the first, for upon pressing it with the finger, pus 

 flowed freely from the opening in the first abscess. During 

 the whole of the month of June, the rabbit was sick and the 

 abscesses suppurated, but less and less. In July they closed ; 

 the animal was well. There could only be felt some nodules 

 under the skin of the abdomen. 



What disturbances might not such an organism carry 

 into the body of a parturient woman, after passing into the 

 peritoneum, the lymphatics or the blood through the maternal 

 placenta ! Its presence is much more dangerous than that of 

 the parasite arranged in chains. Furthermore, its develop- 

 ment is always threatening, because, as said in the work 

 already quoted (April, 1878) this organism can be easily 

 recovered from many ordinary waters. 



I may add that the organism in long chains, and that 

 arranged in pairs are also extremely widespread, and that 

 one of their habitats is the mucous surfaces of the genital 

 tract.' 



Apparently there is no puerperal parasite, properly 

 speaking. I have not encountered true septicemia in 

 my experiments: but it ought to be among the puerperal 

 affections. 



Fourth observation. On June fourteenth, at the Laribois- 

 iere, a woman was very ill following a recent confinement: 

 she was at the point of death: in fact she did die on the 

 fourteenth at midnight. Some hours before death pus was 

 taken from an abscess on the arm, and blood from a puncture 

 in a finger. Both were sowed. On the next day (the 

 fifteenth) the flask containing the pus from the abscess was 

 filled with long chains of granules. The flask containing the 

 blood was sterile. The autopsy was at ten o'clock on the 

 morning of the sixteenth. Blood from a vein of the arm, pus 

 from the uterine walls and that from a collection in the 

 synovial sac of the knee were all placed in culture media. 

 All showed growth, even the blood, and they all contained the 

 long strings of granules. The peritoneum contained no pus. 



When, by the procedure I elsewhere described, urine I* removed in a 

 pure condition by the urethra from the bladder, if any chance growth 

 occurs through ome error of technic. it is the two organisms of which I 

 that arc almost exclusively present. 



