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NJECTING PUS INTO TIIE VEINS OF ANIMALS. 
BRIEF CONSIDERATION OE MR. GAMGEE’S EXPERIMENTAL 
INQUIRY INTO THE EFEECTS OE INJECTING PUS INTO 
THE VEINS OE ANIMALS. 
By Henry Lee, Esq., F.R.C.S., Surgeon to the Lock Hos- 
pital, Assistant-Surgeon to King’s College Hospital, &c. 
[From the Association Medical Journal .) 
In the c Association Journal’ for December 9th, Mr. 
Gamgee has entered into a critical inquiry of the most recent 
opinions concerning the local effects of injecting pus into 
veins ; and has entered at length into a consideration of my 
experiments upon the subject, which, he has done me the 
honour to say, “were, ever since their announcement, re- 
garded as marking an era in the progress of knowledge of 
purulent infection.” 
The limits necessarily assigned to a communication to a 
medical journal forbid even a passing consideration of the 
whole subject; but Mr. Gamgee’s experiments and ob- 
servations afford some particular points well worthy of 
attention. 
With regard to the principles themselves, they have been 
fairly stated to the profession, and have been reprinted and 
adopted in some of the most widely-circulated surgical works 
in the English language. They must stand or fall by the 
test of public experience ; but I cannot for a moment allow 
(as appears to be inferred by Mr. Gamgee) that the con- 
clusions arrived, at depend upon the accuracy of any one set 
of experiments. 
Already have the descriptions of subacute and acute phle- 
bitis given way to the descriptions of the local effects of 
inflammation of veins, and that general contamination of the 
blood to which the name pyoh-cemia has been given : affections 
essentially distinct in their nature, but which may neverthe- 
less frequently co-exist in the same case. As an instance of 
the truth of these remarks, I may refer to the differences 
observable between the chapter on Injuries and Diseases of 
the Veins, in the fifth edition of Dr. Druitt’s excellent 
‘ Manual of Surgery,’ published, in 1851, and that in the sixth 
edition, which has just appeared. 
With these observations, then, I must dismiss the general 
subject, and confine myself to the particular points men- 
tioned in Mr. Gamgee’s interesting inquiry. 
The first sentence selected by Mr. Gamgee for especial 
criticism, and twice published for that purpose, is as follows: 
