AZOTURIA. 
27 
stances already peptonized, and peptones are, as you know, ex¬ 
cellent culture media for microbes. 
The conditions favorable for the maintenance of putrefaction 
ure so numerous that we ask whether digestion can ever go on 
• normally. Fortunately the organism secretes in the stomach, 
•on the introduction of food, a juice which is opposed to all fer¬ 
mentation, hydrochloric acid. Bile is regarded as capable of 
prolonging the arrest of fermentations, but bile is capable of un- 
•dergoing fermentation itself or of putrefying. It can, therefore, 
only feebly oppose fermentation in the small intestine. At any 
rate, it can have no influence upon those which are actively car¬ 
ried on in the large intestine. Thus do we find the small intes¬ 
tine, on the one hand, and the large intestine particularly on the 
•other, capable of passing products of putrefaction into the blood. 
But are the putrid substances toxic ? 
Gaspard, in 1822, established the fact that putrid substances 
are toxic, and that they are actually more so than substances 
arising from disassimilation. He injected into the veins of ani¬ 
mals liquid arising from putrefaction of blood of meat. He in¬ 
duced faintness, diarrhoea, vomiting, hypersemia of mucous mem¬ 
branes, then death. At the autopsy ecchymosis of the digestive 
•canal was seen ; also of cellular tissues, of the muscles of the 
heart, swelling of the spleen, and mesenteric glands, and conges¬ 
tion of the lungs. All these conditions are found after death in 
azoturia, except vomiting. 
We may have alterations occur in the liver, due to a con¬ 
gested condition. If continued or frequently repeated they 
would tend to a result in bilious contamination of the blood. 
Or, perhaps, from some previous disease, we may have altera¬ 
tions in the liver that would have a tendency to prevent it from 
doing its proper work. Any inability of the liver or derange¬ 
ment of its functions would cause changes to take place in the 
alimentary canal, and is in part reabsorbed into the blood, caus¬ 
ing contamination. 
Now, what do these alterations do, or what are the toxics ? 
The organism contains poisons, the origin of which we know, 
