6o2 Microscopic Organisms in Blood of Man and Animals. [part hi. 



visible molecules of every description, they are, nevertheless, still competent to induce 

 all the symptoms which characterised their action before such filtration. These results, 

 Hiller says, were arrived at by Panum, Bergmann, Weidenbaum, "Wolff, Kiissner, and 

 others. 



To the first named of these observers belongs the merit of having contributed 

 some of the earliest and most valuable observations which have been, hitherto, 

 recorded in connection with the nature of the poison existing in certain solutions 

 of decomposing animal matter. Panum's researches were published so far back as 

 1855, but having originally appeared in Danish they had for several years been to a 

 great extent overlooked. They were brought more prominently into notice on their 

 publication in 1874 in Virchow's Archiv. In 1875 * Dr. Cunningham and myself 

 drew attention to these experiments, as we had found that the results of observations 

 made by us, with a like object, based on a series of experiments which included the 

 inoculation and dissection of about 170 dogs, were, in so far as they were comparable, 

 almost in complete accord with those which had been obtained by this distinguished 

 experimentalist. 



Panum found that the coagulum produced by boiling a septinous fluid was more 

 virulent than the fluid itself. The principal facts demonstrated by him may be thus 

 summarised : — 



(1) — That the perfectly clear fluid which may be obtained by filtering solutions of 



putrefying animal substances through several layers of filtering paper 



would induce the characteristic symptoms of the same kind as the un- 



filtered material. 



(2) — That boiling such a fluid for even 11 hours would not materially impair its 



toxic properties. 

 (3) — That although an alcoholic extract of such a fluid proved to be inert, 

 the virulent action of a watery extract of the same fluid was very 

 intense. 

 Panum therefore concludes that a fluid which can retain its specific property after 

 being filtered, boiled, evaporated to dryness, and the residue digested in cold and in 

 boiling alcohol, then re-dissolved and again filtered, cannot owe this property to living 

 organisms of any kind. 



In 1865 Dr. B. W. Eichardson showed that the sero-sanguineous fluid from the 

 peritoneal cavity of a person suffering from pyaemia would communicate fatal 

 disease from one animal to another in a direct series, and that the poison (de- 

 signated " septine ") which effected this could be made to combine with acids so as 

 to form salts which retained the poisonous qualities of the original substance.f A 

 few years later (1868), Bergmann succeeded in obtaining apparently a similar sub- 



 " Cholera : Microscopical and Physiological Researches," Series II., p. 142 of this vol. 

 t The Laiicet, April 3rd, 1876, p. 490. 



