596 Some Observations on Parturition Fever in Ruminants. 
development, so to speak. It is only likely to prove fatal when 
the amount of the poison entering the body is excessive, or when 
there occurs a repetition of its reception. The usual course or 
termination of this received material is for it to be neutralised 
in the blood-stream. 
In the other sense the term is employed to convey a very dif- 
ferent meaning ; not one referring to intensity or amount, but 
one of essential quality. Here this septic infection, as the process 
is called in contradistinction to septic poisoning, does not 
depend for virulence upon the amount of the material — whether 
changed animal products or something else — but upon its 
inherent power of self-augmentation in the animal body in 
which it is implanted. The medium of introduction may be 
decomposing animal fluid, but in addition it must contain micro- 
organisms able to reproduce and propagate themselves, and by 
changes which they induce in the animal tissues give rise to 
conditions which become rapidly fatal. 
Further, to the condition of inoculation with putrid, otherwise 
septic matter, and the production throughout the different organs 
of the body of multiple abscesses, the term pycemia has been given. 
The irritation which, acting upon the tissues, ends in the produc- 
tion of these abscesses, is always associated with micro-organisms. 
This formation of abscesses may be looked upon as developed 
sep)tic infection: it has no connection with septic poisoning. 
So we require to remember that there is SejAiccemia and Scpti- 
ccemia. The fact of the existence of micro-organisms in one form 
at least of septicaemia and in every one of pyaemia seems to be 
allowed. It seems that the bacterium of pyaemia does not pro- 
pagate largely in the circulating blood as in the infective form of 
septicaemia, but becomes fixed at certain points, and from these 
propagates. It is even uncertain whether it is always the same 
bacterium which is associated with pyaemia. 
In carefully gathering up all information pertaining to this 
subject of " parturition fever " of cows and ewes, I am disposed 
to regard it as obviously presenting itself for our notice in two 
very distinct manifestations which are probably often confounded. 
1. There is the fever resulting from what may be designated 
septica^mic poisoning, the result of the entrance into the circula- 
tion of putrid animal matter from intrinsic or extrinsic sources ; 
not capable of self-augmentation, and disposed to exhaust itself 
in the animal body. 2. The more serious form, in which the 
fever results from what at present is termed septica;mic infection, 
in which the received material may be the result of putrefactive 
changes or not, but which must have added to it the specific 
micro-organism ; it is also self-augmentative. 
In cows it is probably the former manifestation which is 
