Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-08-05
ALL ABOUT pYR TIA.

Although no term has become typograph-
ically more familiar than py9mia TO the
general public in the course of President
Garfield's illness, very few readers are
probably aware of the exact significance Of
the word. Indeed, the questions of what
py@mia actually is, how it originates, and
what is the poison by which it is propa-
gated, are questions upon which medical
men are not agreed, and upon which the
ablest histologiats differ. The main fact
is that under certain conditions rot vet
defined, when an abscess or suppurative
process has arrived at a certain stage of
development high fever supervenes in
the patient, and all the phenomena of
blood poisoning are disclosed in their full
est virulence. The phenomena are sup
posed to be due to the absorption of pus
from the abacess and its diffusion in the
circulation but this is denied by able his
tologists, who declare that neither pus
corpuscles nor the products of their de.
struction are ever found in the blood in
septic fever and that the symptoms cannot
be relegated in this source of disturbance.
This point has been insisted upon by so
many observers with the microscope, aud
proclaimed SO many times by experts,
that it seems clearly established that
the septic fever must be traced to some
other cause than the entrance OF pus into
the circulation from an abscess, but what
that cause is lies beyond the visualizing
power of the instrument. More than
this, it is urged by thorough histologists
that the pus corpuscle is the creation OF
high temperature. Its development at
center of inflammation is not especially
due to the disorganization of tissues at
that point, caused possibly by bruise or
by the presence of foreign body, but to
the increase of temperature which accom-
panies the inh2mmatory process. So long
as this increase of temperature is limited
to the iniiammatory center or tract, and
the general temperature of the system or
circulation is normal, the migration of pus
corpuscles into the blood as such is an
impossibihty. They cannot exist as liv-
ing bodies at temperature of $50 de-
grees Fahrenheit, and would Immediately
perish if introduced into the general cir
culation at degree below fever heat.
Indeed, as DIR. Lionel S. Beale remarks,
very few medical observers ever saw
living pus corpuscle. As a general rule,
an abscess is not ready for the lancet
until the inflammation has subsidized in
measure and the once living organisms
of suppuration have persisted from the
altered conditions. In its dead state,
as usually described, the corpuscle is
an apparently fiattened disk Of ovoid peri
meter, almost one sixtieth of milimeter
in long diameter and one SEVENTEEN in short.
Its surface is studded with minute points
about one four hundredth of q miilimeter,
which, when the corpuscle breaks up, form
the primary monads and bacteria Of mi
croseopy. In the living state it is an
elongated organism, rapid in its movements
and perfectly homogeneous in its consist
ency-egg-s shaped, with a slight protuber-
ance in front, thus resembling microscopic
worm. The cause of this protuberance is
not well understood, nor is the phenome-
non always present. But to anyone who
has seen pus corpuscle die the source of
the elongation is very clear. When living,
and in motion, the edges of the disk are
turned up so as to unite at the top and
form q tube such as would be formed by
doubling penny and bringing the mar
gins together. At death these margins
separate, and the basis of elongated vermi-
form structure is discerned to be an oval
disk of protoplasm. Experiments show
taat the eorpuscle perishes at temper
ature lower than l02' Fahrenheit or there
about, and that consequently it cannot
exist except at fever heats SO that pns
poisoning from an abcess, by the migra-
ton of corpuscles in the general circula-
ton, is not possible save under febrile
conditions.