The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1881-08-11
About Py@nia.

Although no term has become Topographic
cally more familiar than py@mia to the gener-
al public in the course ofaPresident 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 propagated are questions upon which
medical men are not agreed and upon which
the ablest histologsts differ. The main fact is
that, under certain conditions not yet defined,
when an abscess or supperatiye process has
arrived at at a certain stage of development a
high fever supervenes in the patient and all
the phenomena OF blood poisoning are disclos-
ed in their fullest vrulence. The phenomena
are supposed to be due to the absorption of
pus from the abscess and its diffusion in the
circulation but this is denied by able histoo-
glsts, who declare that neither purpuscles nor
the products other destruction are ever found
in the blood in septic fever, and that the
symptoms cannot be relocated to this source
OF disturbance. This point has been insisted
upon by so many observers with the micro
scope, and proclaimed SO many times by ex-
perts, that it seems clearly established that the
septic fever must be traced to some other
cause than the entrance of pus into the crcu-
lation from an abscess, but what that cause
is lies beyond the visualizing power of the in
stument. More than this, it is urged
W oAOiouSh AiooOlOSlStS tutb buG puS
corpuscle is the creation of a height
temperature. Its development at cen
tire of inflammation is not especially due
to the DISCRIMINATION of tissues at that point
caused possibly by bruise or by the presence
of a foreign body, but to the increase of tenn
perature which accompanies the Inf1ammato-
ry process. So long as this increase of tenn
perature is limited to the inf1ammatory centre
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
impossibility They cannot exist as living bodies
at temperature of 98.5 degrees or SO degrees
Fahrenheit,and would Immediately perish if in
PRODUCED into the general circulation at degree
below fever heat Indeed, as DR.. Lionel s.
Beale remarks, very few medical observers
ever say living pus corpuscle. AS 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 fattened disk of ovid perimeter,
almost one-sixtieth of millimetre in long
diameter and one-seventieth in short. Its sur
face is studied with minute points about one
four-hundredth of millimetre, which, when
the cOrpuscle breaks up, from the primary
monads and bacteria of microscopy. In the
living state it is an elongated organism, rapid
III its movements and perfectly homogeneous in
its consistency-egg-sh shaped, with slight pro-
tuberance in front, thus resembling a micro
scopic worm The cause of the protuberance
is pot well understood, nor is the phenomenon
always present. But to any one who has seen
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 a tube such as would be
formed by doubling penny and bringing the
margins together At death these margins
separate, and the basis of the elongated YER
inform structure is discerned to be an oval
disk OF protoplasm. Experiments show that
the corpuscle pe1'ishes at temperature lower
than 102 degrees Fahrenheit or thereabout, and
that consequently it cannot exist except at fe-
yer heats so that puss poisoning from an alb
scess by the migration Of corpuscles in the
general circulation is not possible save under
febrile conditions 1s@-