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The seventeenth of May, 1879, a woman, three days past confinement, was ill, as well as the child she was nursing. The lochia were full of the pyogenic vibrio and of the organism of furuncles, although there was but a small proportion of the latter. The milk and the lochia were sowed. The milk gave the organism in long chains of granules, and the lochia only the pus organism.
The first culture, of March thirteenth, contained only the organism of furuncles; the next one, that of the fifteenth, contained an organism resembling that of furunculosis, but which always differed enough to make it easy usually to distinguish it.
At the time of making these observations I spoke of them to Dr. Maurice Reynaud, who was good enough to send me a patient who had had furuncles for more than three months. On June thirteenth I made cultures of the pus from a furuncle of this man. The next day there was a general cloudiness of the culture fluids, consisting entirely of the preceding parasite, and of this alone. Fourth observation.
Blood from the arm at a distance from the furuncle remained completely sterile. June 17, the examination of a fresh furuncle on the same individual gave the same result, the development of a pure culture of the same organism. Fifth observation. July twenty-first, Dr. Maurice Reynaud informed me that there was a woman at the Lariboisiere hospital with multiple furuncles.
As a matter of fact her back was covered with them, some in active suppuration, others in the ulcerating stage. I took pus from all of these furuncles that had not opened. After a few hours, this pus gave an abundant growth in cultures. The same organism, without admixture, was found. Blood from the inflamed base of the furuncle remained sterile.
In this way; whilst the parasite of furuncles is arranged in pairs, very rarely in chains of three or four elements, the new one, that of the culture of the fifteenth, occurs in long chains, the number of cells in each being indefinite. The chains are flexible and often appear as little tangled packets like tangled strings of pearls. The autopsy was performed on the seventeenth at two o'clock.
I believe therefore that it would be extremely instructive in furunculosis, to find a patient willing to submit to a number of punctures in different parts of the body away from formed or forming furuncles, and thus secure many cultures, simultaneous of otherwise, of the blood of the general circulation. I am convinced that among them would be found growths of the micro-organism of furuncles.
The direct microscopic study of the pus, both internal and external, was of extreme interest. It was seen that both contained large numbers of the organism similar to that of furuncles, arranged in pairs, in fours and in packets, some with sharp clear contour, others only faintly visible and with very pale outlines. The external pus contained many pus corpuscles, the internal had none at all.
Therefore in my desire to see it carried on by others, I take the liberty of presenting it to the public in its present condition. I. Furuncles. In May, 1879, one of the workers in my laboratory had a number of furuncles, appearing at short intervals, sometimes on one part of the body and sometimes on another.
It was like a fatty paste of the furuncular organism. Also, it may be noted, that growth of the small organism had begun in less than six hours after the cultures were started. Thus I saw, that it corresponded exactly with the organism of furuncles. The diameter of the individuals was found to be one one-thousandth of a millimeter. III. On puerperal fever. First observation.
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