On pyaemia, or suppurative fever : being the Astley Cooper prize essay for 1868 / by Peter Murray Braidwood.

  • Braidwood, Peter Murray, 1842-1905.
Date:
MDCCCLXVIII [1868]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On pyaemia, or suppurative fever : being the Astley Cooper prize essay for 1868 / by Peter Murray Braidwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    30/384 (page 18)
    absolutely, that the symptoms described under tlie names purulent infection, purulent absorption, purulent diathesis, suppurative phlebitis, &c., are always pro- duced by the admission of the pus globule into the blood; and he, further, confirmed Castelnau and Du- crest’s observation as to the necessity, in the case of ani- mals, of repeated injections, for the com’se of the symp- toms depends on the persistence of the source of the pus. He says, “ there are two distinct diseases, though connected by some appearances in common. The one is determined by the solid elements of the pus, the other by the putridity of some animalised substance.” Sedillot considered that pus admitted into the blood exerted no direct action on that fluid whatever, and only became mischievous when it was detained in the capillary vessels of the lungs or other organs, exciting the irritative symptoms characteristic of the affection, in consequence of the impediment it offered to the due performance of their functions, and to the attempts made at its elimination. He distinguishes pus from white blood corpuscles thus; the latter are one-sixth or one-fifth smaller, lenticular, not spherical, smoother on their surface, and the nuclei of the latter are very small. When both are present, the white corpuscles are less numerous than the others. Pus, he says, may be introduced into the circulation in various ways, and may be derived from a wound, an ulcer, an abscess, or a phlebitis. Aware that the veins leading from a wound, supposed to be the source of purulent infection, are often found, on the most careful examination after death, to be closed, and filled with firm fibrinous clots, Sedillot overcomes this obstacle to his theory by saying, that erosions too small to be recognisable may never-