PART III.] Elaboration of Septinous Poisons by the Living Tissue- Elements. 603 



stance and named it Sepsin* This poison induced symptoms of a like character to 

 what are induced by putrefying solutions, and was frequently even more fatal, in 

 very small doses. Still it appears not to reproduce symptoms exactly similar to the 

 original material, in this respect differing slightly from Panum's " putrid extract," which 

 reproduces the ordinary symptoms of septic poisoning without any modification what- 

 ever. 



To Pasteur and his adherents, who ascribe what may be almost termed super- 

 natural powers of resistance to the " resting spores " of anthracoid and other diseases, 

 the facts adduced in the foregoing paragraphs can carry but little weight. But 

 another series of phenomena have been recorded which point in the same direction. 

 It has been shown that the living tissues of the body will under certain conditions, 

 when irritated by means of purely chemical irritants, —such, for example, as a strong solu- 

 tion of iodine or liquor ammonia, — secrete a fluid which, when transferred from animal 

 to animal, proves not one whit less virulent in its properties than an exudation which has 

 resulted primarily from the introduction into the system of material which has swarmed 

 with bacilli. Observations to this effect have been published by many observers, and Dr. 

 Cunningham and myself have placed on record that we found a large number of bacteria 

 in the blood of a dog which had died as a result of such chemical irritants. These 

 bacteria could not have been the cause of death, nor, most assuredly, could they have 

 derived their origin from the liquid ammonia which had been resorted to to excite the 

 inflammatory process. 



It would seem from these results that the living tissue elements of the body itself 

 play a much more important part in the elaboration of septinous and allied poisons, 

 than what has been of late ordinarily ascribed to them. 



Such, so far as I have been able to learn, are the main facts which have 

 been recorded with regard to the microphytes of the blood in health, and in diseased 

 conditions. 



II. THE PROTOZOA WHICH HAVE BEEN FOUND IN THE BLOOD. 



The organisms which have been described in the former part of this paper, as is well 

 known, were, until within the last few years, considered to be more allied to animals 

 than plants, and were consequently classified as belonging to the animal kingdom. 

 Hackel even now places them in his intermediate kingdom, the protista; and for a 

 considerable time subsequent to the promulgation of the doctrine of fermentation 

 by the agency of living cells, vibrionic fermentation, of various kinds, was supposed 

 to be effected by animal life — the animalcule, during the respiratory process, depriv- 

 ing the solutions in which they were found of the oxygen which they contained, and 

 thus starting a series of complicated changes. It has, however, been for some time con- 



* Centralhl. f. d. medic in. Wisseiuch, 1868, p. 497 ; cited by Dr. Arnold Hiller, op. cit. 



