OF PUS IN THE BLOOD. 49 
vessels become sufficiently enlarged during inflammation to con- 
tain a row of pus-globules. 
If it should be remarked that pus is often formed without any 
obvious addition of fibrine to the neighbouring parts, it should be 
recollected that this is not a healthy, but a diseased form of sup- 
puration; and the distinction and explanation are not difficult. In 
the formation of the unhealthy pus in question, the fibrine is broken 
down, mixed, and excreted with the pus; and hence the flaky, 
curdy appearance of such matter, its proneness to putrefaction, 
and the cases cited by some authors as instances of suppuration 
without inflammation, and the old term, “ badly matured matter.” 
Independently of the paucity of true pus-globules in this kind of 
discharge, with the abundance of flaky particles, its tendency to 
putrefaction would afford strong proof of its containing fibrine but 
little changed in its composition; for of all the animal fluids, pus 
is, probably, that which resists putrefaction with the greatest perti- 
nacity. The eighth case, that of Dunn, is but one among many 
that I could cite in illustration of these observations. 
It remains to deduce the conclusions from the experiments and 
observations related in this paper. 
The term suppurative fever is not new, and its signification is 
probably now extended; for it seems to be an appropriate one for 
the different forms of constitutional disturbance under consideration. 
If the presence of pus in the blood and the fever in these cases be 
not related as cause and effect, the coincidence would appear to be 
no less interesting than remarkable. 
What a field of inquiry does this view open to us ? Henceforth, 
whenever a patient is affected with inflammatory fever, or that low 
typhoid state which is so generally a forerunner of death, as a 
consequence of traumatic or idiopathic inflammation, the state of 
the blood will present an interesting subject of investigation. 
And this is not merely a matter of curiosity ; for the question will 
arise, whether, in the treatment of such cases, it would not be ad- 
vantageous to produce suppuration as soon as possible on the sur- 
face of the body, so as to establish a drain by which the blood 
might be deprived of the offending matter. It may be asked also, 
whether the benefit so often effected by blisters, setons, &c., 
in certain internal inflammations, — or by incisions, which cause 
suppuration in inflammatory affections of the integuments, be not 
explicable by this theory] It is well known that, in cases of trau- 
matic or idiopathic inflammation, attended with great swelling and 
febrile excitement, the establishment of suppuration in the part is 
generally a favourable symptom, the separation of the pus from 
the blood being a sort of crisis to the symptomatic fever. In 
small-pox, it is a popular belief that “ the striking in,” as it is 
VOL. XII. G 
