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been dressed and the patient put to bed as usual, thinking it
was not a serious case. But the next morning one of the
young men who was in charge during the doctor's absence
telephoned me to come and see the case, that he was sus-
picious there was something wrong with it. I came to ex-
amine it and found swelling, more swelling than there should
be, and upon pressure there was a crackling sound ; gas was
being generated in the tissue, and there was a blueness
spreading about the wound and spreading up the leg some-
what from the wound. A clear case of gangrene was devel-
oping. Without any delay the leg was amputated just below
the knee, hoping to eradicate the difficulty. It went along
very well for a day or two, when we noticed a spot in one
of the lips of the wound, no larger than a dime, but a very
suspicious spot. Upon examining carefully we found gas
developing there, although there had been no death of the
tissue, no coloring of the tissue as yet, but there was the
symptom that showed certainly the presence of that micro-
organism so much dreaded as producing gangrene and
death of tissue wherever it goes. The question was. Shall we
cut off that leg higher up? But we tried other means. We
pumped the tissues around within an inch or two, and all
through it, as full of salicylic acid dissolved in ether as we
could fill it. Well, we succeeded. The parts which we had
filled so completely with salicylic acid and sulphuric ether
sloughed out in a few days, but we saw nothing more of the
gangrene we had succeeded in stopping it.
;
Now, in another case of a similar nature that came to my
notice we were not so successful. It was in the country some
distance and the physician in charge came to me. I went to
see the case and found it was undoubtedly a case of infection
of this same kind. Some injury had occurred to the foot,
very trivial, and this peculiar swelling with the crackling,
showing the developing of gas, and the blue color showing
the death of tissue, had begun and was creeping up the leg.
We proposed to amputate, but it was five or six miles to
town aid we had nothing with us. By the time we could
get preparations made and get to the work that blueness and
the swelling had already gone into the body and the next
day the boy was dead. Now this is a poison that kills the
tissue as it goes. We may infect a mouse upon the end of

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