PHYSIOLOGICAL PATHOLOGY. 
33 
pies appeared at the point of inoculation, but no disease could be 
produced by direct inoculation with the fluid contained in these 
furuncili. According to these experiments the disease is not 
transmissible either to cattle or to rabbits, at least by the sub-epi¬ 
dermic method of introducing the virus.— Journ. Soc. Scientif. 
MICROBISM AND ABSCESSES. 
By Mr. Vernetjil. 
It is held, to this day, as the result of former studies, that 
pus is not exclusively characterized, in its anatomical point of 
view, by its corpuscules, since it also contains microbes, which on 
account of their frequency, seem to belong to general pyogenesis. 
According to all appearances, they form its unique and real 
cause, as when experimentally introduced in the organism, they 
give rise to suppuration and to abscess. 
Pus is at times mono-microbic , and contains but one kind of 
microbe, and again may be poly-microbic , and contain several dif¬ 
ferent kinds and species. 
In the first case, there is no doubt in respect to the pyogenic 
property of the microbe found; but in the second, it has been im¬ 
possible, as yet, to decide whether all the microbes observed or 
only a portion of them are liable to produce suppuration. Until 
this problem is solved, the author thinks it proper to divide the 
microbes now known and found in abscesses, into two categories, 
the first including those which are so often, so singularly, and so 
commonly observed in suppurations, that they are properly con¬ 
sidered as normal and necessary, if not exclusive, and which may 
consequently be denominated pyogenic microbes proper; while the 
second class consists of those which are but occasionally and 
irregularly encountered, and may k be called microbes accidentally 
pyocolous. 
By this method the old classification of abscesses, based more 
upon the results of clinical observations than referring to 
the origin of the causes and nature of the diseased process, is re¬ 
placed by a more natural and a simpler theory, based upon the 
etiology of the pyogenesis as well as upon the pathological ana- 
