504 
G. 8. AGERSBORG. 
ones, to allow the placenta, in cases of abortion occurring in the 
earlier months of gestation, to decompose and slough away, 
sometimes requiring weeks for its accomplishment, and yet acci¬ 
dents from such causes are exceedingly rare. Is it not true, that 
while a dissection wound destroys the life of one, it is perfectly 
inocuous to another ? I know a gentleman, an industrious dissec¬ 
tor, who very often wounds himself, even when engaged on the 
worst subjects, and yet experiences no inconvenience therefrom ; 
also another who hardly dare touch a subject, having more than 
once nearly lost his life from erysipelas, caused by assisting at 
post-mortem examinations, although receiving no wound. Here, 
then, we have an illustration of two conditions: in the one we 
have the pathological aptitude, as some one has called it, and in 
the other no such condition exists. In the one we have plastic, 
in the other aplastic blood. Were the two above mentioned 
gentlemen females, there can be but little doubt how the perils 
of maternity would be surmounted in either case. The one would 
survive almost any accident, and the other scarcely the most 
trifling. But now let us go back. We have expressed the idea 
that metro-peritonitis had no relation to any condition that could 
be properly denominated parturient fever, or any other kind of 
fever. If we are to have any parturient fever at all, it seems to 
me high time we should confine the title to parturient septicaemia. 
Again, we said the generative tract of the newly delivered 
female was the gateway through which passed the materies 
morbi. Now, what is this morbific agent—is it always decaying 
or dead animal matter ? Surely not always. Quite recently I 
heard of a woman who had well marked scarlatina, from which 
she died fourteen days after confinement—a primipara in her 
20th year, her previous health had been good, in fact vigorous, 
but the environments were wretched. Previous to her confine¬ 
ment she had lived in a basement with decaying wooden walls, 
the house had been banked up with manure from the barn-yard 
the previous winter, which still remained at the time of her con¬ 
finement in late summer. Now, this woman died of scarlatinal 
poison, and yet none of the rest of the family suffered from it. 
Does not this case fairly illustrate the pathological aptitude 
