Researches on suppuration. Sect. 1. On the frequent presence and on the effects of pus in the blood, in diseases attended by inflammation and suppuration / by George Gulliver.

Date:
[1838]
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Credit: Researches on suppuration. Sect. 1. On the frequent presence and on the effects of pus in the blood, in diseases attended by inflammation and suppuration / by George Gulliver. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    fore 1 had turned my attention to the state of the blood in phthisis. He has lately informed me that he has found pus in the blood in seventeen instances after death, in sixteen of which there was declared suppuration, and in one none could be detected : in the latter, the patient died of acute inflam- matory disease. Before considering the conclusions to be deduced from the preceding observations, it may be proper to advert briefly to the nature and use of suppuration, although I shall have oc- casion to bring forward the evidence on matters of opinion in a more systematic form in a future part of these researches. Since the microscopic observations of Mr. Hunter, Sir Eve- rard Home,' and Mr. Bauer, the opinion has oflen been ex- pressed in this country, that the globules of pus are nothing but those of blood, modified by the inflammatory process. 1 be- lieve Sir Astley Cooper and the late Dr. Young came long ago to this conclusion. Finally, on the continent, M. Gendrin, without much regard to the observations of English patho- logists, adopts precisely the same theory, supported indeed by a series of very ingenious experiments, which have been generally considered conclusive on this subject. I have repeated the experiments of M. Gendrin with great care, and although I see no reason to dissent from that part of his conclusion already stated as having been long since ad- vanced in this country, I have not been able to observe the phenomena related in his work. It seems not improbable that M. Gendrin was influenced by the erroneous views of M. Milne Edwards as to the globular structure of fibrine; for M. Gendrin states in one place that pus is but a modification of fibrine, although in others he informs us that it is a trans- formation of the blood-corpuscles that constitutes suppuration. By cauterizing the web of a frog’s foot under the micro- scope, or by elevating on the polished blade of a lancet a film of the edge of a wound previously made in the part, he as- sures us how easy it is to see the blood-particles gradually transformed into those of pus. I regret to say that I have not been able to succeed in this observation, because I found, after repeated trials, that I could not by any means induce suppuration in batrachian reptiles. With regard to the conversion of clots of fibrine into pus, some experiments to be adduced in another section of this in- quiry, render it extremely probable that the matter often found in the centre of such clots in the heart and great vessels, is nothing more than softened fibrine; and which, although it resembles pus in some particulars, presents neither the che- mical nor the microscopical character of that fluid. I have