AND MEDICAL SCIENCE 319 



processes of great intensity, such common organisms have been 

 converted into specific or " pathogenic " microorganisms, capable 

 henceforth of preserving their specific characters and of " breeding 

 true " in suitable media. 



Dowdeswell, who has many times repeated these experiments 

 for the production of both varieties of septicasmia, points out that 

 the form named after Pasteur corresponds with what Koch has 

 termed " malignant oedema," and that the bacillus which charac- 

 terises it is an extremely common form often found in the outside 

 world. Still, when the germ-free chemical irritants are used, he 

 declares his belief that infection from without is precluded and 

 that the Bacilli " originated from within the animal organism." ' 

 In regard to the production of the form named after Davaine it 

 appears that putrid blood sometimes fails, especially in winter. 

 Some particular stage of the putrefactive process seems necessary. 

 Nothing more than this is proved, though Dowdeswell assumes, 

 without adducing a vestige of proof, that the organism character- 

 ising this form of the disease in some way gets into the putrefy- 

 ing blood owing to " atmospheric contamination." But this is a 

 mere unsupported guess. The evidence tends to show that it is 

 one of the many forms developed at a certain stage in the putre- 

 fying blood, which is capable of infecting the system through the 

 subcutaneous tissue, but not when introduced into the peritoneal 

 cavity. This Bacillus of Davaine's septicaemia is, according to 

 Dowdeswell, a so-called "specific organism" whose characters he 

 has minutely described ; = and it is not known to exist in the outside 

 world apart from putrid blood in certain stages of change. 



This production of two different forms of septicaemia by the 

 inoculation of some of the same putrid material into different sites 

 is a matter of the greatest importance. The putrid blood under 

 the skin gives rise to one form of specific microorganism and con- 

 tagious disease, while two or three drops of the same putrid blood 

 introduced into the peritoneal cavity of a similar animal give rise 

 to swarms of a different organism and the development of another 

 contagious affection. The differences in the inflammatory pro- 

 cesses in the two situations are capable, that is, of transforming 

 some common microorganisms into two quite different specific 

 bacilli ; while the germ-free chemical irritants, with even more 



' Loc. cit., p. 104. 



' " Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society," 1882, vol. ii., p. 310, and the 

 " Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science," 1882, p. 66. 



