502 
G. 8. AGERSBORG. 
I hoped to carry these and other experiments on, but failing 
the means to the purpose, was obliged to give them up. 
{To be continued .) 
PATHOLOGY AND TREATMENT OF PARTURIENT 
FEVER. 
(A paper read before the College Association of the A. V. C .) 
By G. S. Agersborg, Yet. Student. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen —The subject allotted to me 
for reading is on “ Pathology and Treatment of Parturient 
Pever.” I have had ample time, but the subject is stupendous, 
at least to a first course student spending his vacation on the 
frontier with limited personal data, and access to libraries im¬ 
possible. However, we will present a few thoughts on the sub. 
ject. 
Puerpural fever is a term of fearful import, even in this 
day of enlightenment, and for centuries preceding the present was 
almost the synonym of death. But to-day, thanks to the scientific 
spirit of the age, if this terrible disease still confronts us with a 
fearful mortality, it is infinitely less than formerly, and we may 
reasonably hope that with the dawning of the 20th century will 
come the answer to what now is a subject of speculation and 
doubt, viz., its causation, which to-day in many cases is fairly 
pointed out, yet in many instances answered only by hypothesis 
open to distrust. A discussion of puerperal fever is a discussion 
of blood-poisoning in the majority of, if not in all cases; lesions of 
continuity in the generative tract of the recently delivered female 
being the gateway through which pass the autogenetic and 
heterogenetic morbific agents that form the main pathological 
elements of the disease, “ the morbid opportunity,” as Trousseau 
so tersely expresses it. Nearly all writers, as far as we know, on 
this subject, include under this head cases of jnetro-peritonitis, so 
we have various pathological conditions to deal with under the 
name of parturient fever. Here, if we may be permitted to venture 
our own opinion, we would withdraw metro-peritonitis from the 
