Page:The third Huxley lecture.pdf/11

7 was to be found not only in the course of the channels leading from the original seat of mischief to the main trunk, hut also in branches along which it must have advanced in the reverse direction in spite of the valves of the veins. The plugging of the axillary seemed also a very noteworthy circumstance. Sedillot had shown that multiple abscesses in the lungs were caused by introducing pus into the veins of an animal and it seemed probable that the collections of pus in those organs in the present case had been of similar metastatic origin. Yet the plugging of the axillary, shutting off the pus in the veins from the general circulation, seemed inconsistent with such a view. I took careful Camera Lucida sketches of the constituents of the pus from the various situations in which it occurred; and I also made a record of the magnifying power employed, by sketching with the camera the scale of a micrometer placed upon the stage of the microscope. And I would venture to> recommend this practice strongly to pathologists. The sketch which I then made is as valuable to me to-day as if it had been made yesterday. I see from my drawing what I noted at the time, that the solid constituents of the pus were in no case pus corpuscles such as we then knew them, and I also see that they were not leucocytes. I could not explain at the time the facts that I observed, but subsequent investigation has, I believe, made them intelligible.

An epidemic, as we termed it, of hospital gangrene occurred during my house surgeoncy, and I was charged