Surgical bacteriology / by Nicholas Senn.

  • Senn, Nicholas, 1844-1908.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Surgical bacteriology / by Nicholas Senn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    no trace of the microorganisms could be found in the blood, they had not passed beyond the lung tissue. In the 3 fatal cases the animals died 17, 25, and 70 hours after the injection, and the microbes could be found in nearly all of the internal organs and the blood. In the 2 cases in which the trachea had been altered by traumatic irritation, the animals were killed 24 and 25 hours after inoculation, and on examination it was seen that the infection had remained local. In 6 experiments in which the bronchial tubes were irritated with a solution of nitrate of silver 6 hours before inoculation, the animals died 20, 24, 40, and 48 hours after the injection, having before death shown evidences of serious pulmonary trouble. The post-mortem showed in all of them pulmonary oedema and pleuritis^ but staphylococci were found in only 2 of them in the effusion. In 6 animals fed on the cul- ture, in 4 on a healthy stomach and in 2 after an artificial gastro- intestinal catarrh had been produced, he made a subcutaneous fracture, and suppuration followed at the seat of the fracture. He believes that in all cases in which the microbes entered the circulation the entrance was effected through some perhaps inap- preciable lesion. In many instances of recurring suppuration years after the primary injury or disease, we have reason to believe that the microbes were introduced with a foreign body, or became encapsulated in the granulation tissue during the healing pro- cess, and remained there in a latent condition until by some accidental cause the surrounding tissues had undergone changes favorable for their growth. I have seen numerous cases of secondary osteomyelitis ten to twenty-five years after the primary attack, which occurred in the sclerosed bone, usually near one of the epiphyseal extremities. In all of these cases the disease was deeply located, the primary starting-point being in the same locality as in the first attack. A patient who has once suffered from osteomyelitis during childhood, is always prone to suffer from recurring attacks, and the disease, without excep- tion, selects the old site. The difficulties which deep cavities in bone present to the final process of definitive healing, offer an