PUTRID INFECTION—CHRONIC SEPTICEMIA. 183 
In cases where the diseased process is recent, there is some hope of 
recovery; but as soon as an extensive territory is invaded by the 
bacilli, the infection is generalized, and the organism deeply intoxi- 
cated, there is no agent that can arrest the progress of septicemia, 
Local disinfection, tonics, and diffusible stimulants administered in- 
ternally, only extend by a few hours a useless fight. By the extreme 
weakness of the subject, the depression of the pulse, the coolness of 
the body, it is easy to see that death is approaching. 
The researches of Chamberland and Roux have shown that it is pos- 
sible to give animals immunity from gangrenous septicemia, by inject- 
ing into them a sufficient dose “of a completed culture of septic vibrios, 
freed from all the microbes which have proliferated; that is, by having 
been heated to r10° for 10 minutes.” This is a peculiar fact of the 
method of vaccination with soluble substances. The continued action 
of heat and of antiseptics upon the virulent pus furnished by tritura- 
tion of the muscles of an animal killed by traumatic gangrene, has also 
given to Cornevin vaccines capable of freeing animals from this disease. 
But the duration of the immunity lasts only from fifteen days to a 
month. On this account, these means of giving immunity have not 
been used outside of the laboratory; they are without practical ap- 
plication 
PUTRID INFECTION—CHRONIC SEPTICAMIA. 
Under the names of putrid infection, chronic septicemia, and putrid 
intoxication, have been described complications of traumas, and morbid 
conditions which are variable in their characteristics and their progress, 
and remain still doubtful as to their boundaries and nature. Putrid 
intoxication differs from septicemia and purulent infection; it is not 
accompanied, like the first, by gangrenous phlegmasia of the peritrau- 
matic zone; and at the autopsy of those that die with it, metastatic 
abscesses are not found disseminated through the organs, as in the 
second. Complication of large suppurating or gangrenous wounds, it 
seems due especially to the absorption of putrid liquids, and of soluble. 
poisons accumulated on the wounds. Colin proved this experimentally. 
In some cases, at the same time that the ptomaines are absorbed, the 
organism may be invaded by microbes of various species and virulency : 
micrococci, staphylococci, and bacteria. Putrid intoxication has a 
march more or less rapid. According to the quantity, the degree of 
nocidity of the toxic products, and the pathogenous activity of the 
micro-organisms which have entered the blood vessels. It may kill in 
a few hours, even in twenty-four hours; but, ordinarily, it proceeds 
more slowly, and in its principal clinical characteristics differs little 
from pyohzmia. 
The prophylactic treatment demands the same means as that of puru- 
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