§ XIII.] Traumatic infectious diseases. 167 



present agree in attesting the significance of his Bacillus as the 

 specific contagium of cholera. Emmerich's results from Naples 

 and Palermo, on the other hand, are not consistent with those 

 of any other observer or with themselves; this detracts from 

 the value of his experimental results in view of Virchow's 

 observations. From the material before us the unprejudiced 

 critic cannot, in my judgment, find any valid objection to the 

 views of Koch and his school. 



6. Among the diseases due to the action of Bacteria must be 

 reckoned also traumatic infectious diseases, with their great 

 variety of characteristic symptoms, affections also incident to 

 child-bearing, and others connected with the formation of groups 

 of ulcers, of abscesses of the skin and of the internal organs, of 

 local skin-abscesses, boils, and ulcers, as well as more serious 

 maladies (62). In these affections Bacteria-forms are found on 

 the infected surfaces of the wounds, in pus, &c., and in all but a 

 few cases, which for some special reasons are of an exceptional 

 nature ; and the eminent success of the antiseptic treatment of 

 wounds introduced by Lister, the object of which is to pre- 

 vent the approach of the organisms which set up decompo- 

 sition, and to render them harmless, is an indirect proof 

 according to our present views that these forms, as promoters 

 of decomposition, are in causal connection with the affections in 

 question. 



This connection may be of two kinds. The contagium may 

 cause local suppuration, formation of abscesses, &c., at the spot 

 where it is found, either remaining in the wound which received 

 it, or passing from it into the blood and with the blood into 

 remote organs ; or else unorganised poisonous bodies, ptomaines 

 (see page 140), or similar substances are formed at the points of 

 infection, as products of the vegetation of the contagium, and are 

 then distributed in the blood and conveyed into the body, pro- 

 ducing symptoms of poisoning in it. It is also conceivable that 

 these two fundamentally distinct processes may occur in com- 

 bination. 



