Page:Wound infections and some new methods for the study of the various factors which come into consideration in their treatment.djvu/35

Rh the finding that heavy sowings of microbes into serum are effective in giving cultures, while light sowings are not only ineffective, but lethal to the implanted microbes. For it would be only natural that the resistance offered by the antitryptic power of the blood should be overborne by the mass effect of a number of microbes operating upon a restricted or—and this would come into consideration in localised infections—a mechanically isolated quantum of blood. And, again, it would be only natural that the mass effect of a large volume of antitryptic serum would effectively quench the digestive activities of a very few microbes; and also, I think, in accordance with what we know, that microbes deprived of access to foodstuffs should perish of inanition.

Our hypothesis would also make intelligible, in connexion with infections by sero-saprophytic microbes, that frequent and heavy sowings into the blood should be required before a septicæmia can supervene upon a local infection. And again our hypothesis makes it comprehensible that there should be serious difficulty in obtaining hæmocultures, even when the microbes have gained a footing in the blood-stream.

And, lastly, our theory brings home to us that, in considering the defence of the body against