CHEMICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 49 



tain leucine, tyrosine, xanthine, and uric acid ; in the 

 pus from jaundiced persons biliary acids and cholo- 

 phseine are found ; in that from diabetic patients sugar. 

 The so-called blue pus derives that colour from a kind 

 of vibrio, which yields its pigment to chloroform, from 

 which it is obtained in crystals, and termed pyocyanine. 

 The solid matters contained in pus amount to from 

 10 to 15 per cent. ; its ash is similar to that of blood, 

 contains 72 per cent, of sodium-chloride, and more 

 potassium-salt than blood-serum. A knowledge of the 

 composition and products of decomposition of various 

 kinds of pus from abscesses, ulcers, wounds, &c., is of 

 the utmost importance for the study and treatment of 

 reactive fever after wounds and operations, of various 

 forms of blood disease termed septichsemia, and pysemia. 

 In all these affections pus, or products of its decompo- 

 sition, are absorbed or enter in a more grossly me- 

 chanical manner into the lymph and blood, set up an 

 acute patholytical process which leads to violent attacks 

 of shivering, fevers, sweating, diarrhoea ; then, in the 

 case of septichaemia and pyaemia to secondary deposits 

 of pus or other fluids in various organs and cavities, 

 particularly the lungs and liver, and ultimately, and in 

 nearly all cases, to death. Against this fatal disease a 

 particular kind of treatment of wounds, the so-called 

 antiseptic treatment, has lately been devised, and is now 

 under the consideration of surgeons. 



The function of the spleen is not well known, but spleen 

 seems connected with the elaboration of certain 

 constituents of the blood and certain processes of 

 digestion. The organ contains much blood, and a 



4 



