238 LECTURE X. 



People have plagued themselves to an indefinite extent 

 about these purulent cysts and invented all possible the- 

 ories to account for them, until at length the simple fact 

 came out, that their contents are frequently nothing 

 more than a finely granular pulp of an albuminous sub- 

 stance, which does not offer even the slightest resem- 

 blance in its more intimate structure to pus. This was 

 so far tranquillizing, as there is no observation as yet on 

 record of the death of any patient from pyeemia who had 

 sacs of this description even in pretty considerable num- 

 ber, but it ought to have struck those who are so much in- 

 clined to establish a connection between peripheral throm- 

 boses, which are however just the same thing, and pyaemia. 



For the question naturally arises how far particular 

 disturbances that can be designated by the name of pyae- 

 mia may, in consequence of the softening of the thrombi, 

 be evoked in the body. To this in the first place we may 

 answer that secondary disturbances certainly are very 

 frequently occasioned, but not so much by the immediate 

 introduction of the softened masses as fast as they be- 

 come liquid into the blood, as by the detachment of lar- 

 ger or smaller fragments from the end of the softening 

 thrombus which are carried along by the current of blood 

 and driven into remote vessels. This gives rise to the 

 very frequent process upon which I have bestowed the 

 name of Embolia. 



This is an occurrence which we can here only briefly 

 touch upon. In the peripheral veins the danger pro- 

 ceeds chiefly from the small branches. By no means 

 rarely do these become quite filled with masses of coagu- 

 lum. As long however as the thrombus is confined to 

 the branch itself, so long the body is not exposed to any 

 particular danger ; the worst that can happen is that, in 

 consequence of a peri- or meso-phlebitis,* an abscess 



* See the Author's " Gesammelte Abhandl.," p. 484. 



