SURGICAL SEPTICAMIA—TRAUMATIC GANGRENE. 179 
disease in the cases of horses. In 1840, Renault, after having insisted 
upon the dangers of the exposure of wounded tissues, incriminated, as. 
conditions of its development, the. presence in wounds of clots of blood, 
of mortified tissues, of putrefied organic matter, and the contact of those 
clots and of those tissues with the warm, damp atmosphere, loaded 
with the “ miasmas ” of putrefaction. After Bottini had demonstrated 
its transmissibility, it was no longer disputed that the infection is car- 
ried, especially to accidental traumas, not by the air, but by solids and 
liquids, by contaminated objects, pus and putrid serosities, earth and 
manure. 
The researches of Chauveau and Arloing have established that the 
septic vibrio of Pasteur is the agent of the gangrenous septicemia of the 
human and of the animal species. This anzrobiotic vibrio presents 
itself under two principal aspects : rst, under the form of rods (baton- 
nets) or of threads, more or less long and mobile; 2d, under that of 
germ-corpuscles. A completely developed adult is killed by the oxygen 
of the air and by that which liquids hold in suspension ; but the spores 
are not at all affected by this agent. If the septic elements contained 
in liquids or solid matter forming a coat of a certain thickness, are- 
exposed to the air, notwithstanding the action of oxygen, the vibrios. 
concealed in the depth of this coat multiply and develop spores—the 
“vestals ” of septic virulency—in spite cf oxygen and most micro- 
bicide agents. It is these spores confined in septic matters which 
constitute the agents of contagion ; after desication and disaggregation: 
of this matter, they form the sepizc dust, the seed which transmits every- 
where the dangerous infection. 
Fresh virulent serosity energetically resists antiseptics. The most 
powerful of those seems to be sulphurous acid. Permanganate of po- 
tassium, 1 in 20, only attenuates the virulency. Corrosive sublimate, 1 
in 1000 or 1 in 500, is without action uponit. Carbolic acid, 3, 2, or even 
1 in roo, destroys the dry wrus after six hours’ contact. Putrefaction 
kills it also. But matter dried between 15-38° C., before putrefaction 
takes hold of it, preserves its virulency for years (Chauveau & Arloing). 
The already old experiments of Billroth, then those of Jeannel and 
Laulanié (1885) have shown that septic elements do not pass through 
granulating membranes. Wounds entirely covered with intact granula- 
tions are protected from septicaemia. They can be sprinkled, with im- 
punity, with septic liquids, even covered afterwards with a dressing, 
and not be infected; and though they absorb a certain quantity of 
ptomaines, no serious symptoms of poisoning appear. But, should the 
granulating membrane be chafed and the barrier that it forms be re- 
moved from any place, no matter how small, the condition is realized 
for septicemia. The vascular apparatus, when perfect in the consti- 
tution of the walls of its numerous canals, is not very favorable ground 
