Page:Wound infections and some new methods for the study of the various factors which come into consideration in their treatment.djvu/34

18 Let me take my departure from those facts which we were considering a moment ago, relating to the culture of pyogenic microbes in the blood fluids. You will remember that I suggested in connexion with serophytic microbes that these must find all the food materials they require ready formed in the blood fluids; and in connexion with sero-saprophytic microbes, that for these no nutrient substances would be available until the albuminous substances of the blood had undergone some sort of preparatory transformation.

I conceive that that transformation could come only by a digestive process. Now, supposing this to be so, there would come into account a counteracting influence in the serum. For we have there an anti-fermentative, or, as we usually style it, an antitryptic element, which would directly counteract any digestive element which might be struggling to come into operation. And it is clear that microbes which were dependent for their sustenance upon the products of digestive action could establish themselves in the blood fluids only on condition that this antitryptic influence was overborne.

This hypothesis furnishes, as it seems to me, an explanation of certain striking facts relating to the cultivation of microbes on blood fluids, and to bacterial infections. It, as it seems to me, explains