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.

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    and pycemia. “ It is now Imown,” says lie, “ that the lining membrane of veins rarely pr-esents evidences of inflammation ; that it probably never secretes pus, and that the appearance of suppuration noticed in these vessels is, in truth, caused by softening clots.’'* Virchoiv (1860), examining the subject from a patho- logical point of view, affirms that it is a puriform, but not a purulent substance “ which infects the system and produces this disease. Every time, he says, me- tastatic deposits occur, thrombosis is also present in certain vessels. “ In using the term ‘ Pyaemia,’ we must not seek, he remarks, “ for a common central point in a purulent infection of the blood, but the term must be regarded as a collective name for several pro- cesses dissimilar in their nature. The constitutional symptoms may, according to this distinguished patho- logist, be due to three sets of causes : thrombosis, re- sulting in mechanical obstruction, caused by the arrest- ment of a fragment of foreign matter in the capillaries; ichorous infection (septhsemia), “ a dyscrasia, in which ichorous substance has made its way into the body, displaying its effects in an acute form in the organs which have a special predilection for such matters, and leucocytosis, when there is irritation of the lym- phatic glands. He considers, that while in dyscrasise, as scrofula, cancer, &c., the constitution is secondarily affected after the organs, the opposite condition occurs in pysemia.t The various writers on this subject since the last- mentioned date have discussed chiefly the relation of CaUander, J. W., in “ Holme’s Smgery,” vol. i. p. 266. t Vircliow, K. “ CeUular PatllologJ^” Translated by Dr Cliance, 1860, pp. 177-220.