POLYMORPHISM OF MICROBES. 283 
Such are Bacteriwm termo and Bacillus subtilis, the 
microbes of putrefaction, those of the sweat of feet, 
etc, of which we have spoken above; such, again, is 
the bacillus of Biichner’s meat infusion, that of Sattler’s 
jequirity, and finally, Grawitz’s Aspergillus, mentioned 
in this chapter. 
These various microbes, inoculated or injected into 
blood, may indeed produce different disorders, which 
in some cases always remain local (adema); in others 
are limited to metastatic centres encysted in various 
organs—the liver, kidneys, lungs, etc.; or, again, they 
may produce a general infection of the blood, as in the 
septicemia produced by Davaine when he inoculated 
rabbits with the fluid of putrid beef. These rabbits 
died within two days, and their blood was found to 
be full of Bacteriwm termo. The same result has been 
obtained by Pasteur and Koch, by merely inoculating 
guinea-pigs and mice with a little putrid earth or 
water, in which the same organism was evidently 
present.' But in no case a disease with distinct cha- 
racters was produced by this means, with special 
symptoms, epidemic or contagious, analogous to those 
of erysipelas, anthrax, tuberculosis, or cholera. Hence 
the name of experimental septicemia, since these 
diseases do not exist in nature. 
On the other hand, those microbes are termed 
pathogenic which always characterize by their 
presence a special disease, epidemic or contagious, and 
possessing special symptoms and lesions, whether this 
. 
