128 The Farmer's Veterinary Adviser. 



or less variable symptoms. It is, therefore, in its causation 

 not one disease, but rather a group of allied diseases, and 

 this is one reason why one attack will not necessarily pro- 

 tect against a second. 



Among the micro-organisms may be named a micrococcus 

 of septicaemia in rabbits, fowls, rats, and guinea-pigs ; a mi- 

 crococcus from the mouths of certain men, fatal to rabbits ; 

 two bacilli of septicaemia in the mouse, 1.6 /t (i-g-Jmr inch) 

 and 1 /i { 'iiloo inch) in length. It is clear that different 

 germs are present in different cases and in different animals, 

 and that a germ proving fatal to one genus of animal is 

 often comparatively harmless to another genus. As in the 

 case of pyaemia, ill-health, an impure condition of the blood 

 and animal fluids, foul, close atmosphere, overcrowding of 

 patients, and a special potency of the poison, from previous 

 growth in given media, and above all in the animal body, 

 strongly conduce to an attack. 



Septicaemia may appear at any time, from the moment of 

 the infliction of a poisoned wound to any stage of its pro- 

 gress, whereas pyaemia occurs only after the onset of suppu- 

 ration. Again it may remain exclusively local or it may 

 produce at once general fever with little local inflammation 

 and destroy the patient in two to four days. The differ- 

 ence depends largely on the varying strength of the poison 

 and on the difference in the power of resistance in different 

 individuals. The local form affects, especially, the lym- 

 phatic vessels, giving rise to local, boggy, dark-red swelling, 

 and in white, delicate skins to a branching redness, lead- 

 ing along the lines of the lymphatics and veins. It appears 

 to be generally through these lymphatics that the poison 

 enters the blood to produce the constitutional disease, 

 whereas in micrococcus pyaemia the distribution appears to 

 take place mainly through the veins, and in the substance 

 of minute floating blood-clots. 



Septicaemia usually sets in without a chill, but sequent to 



