Page 124 - My FlipBook

boils upon the hand, or something- of this nature, and have
noted that the lymphatic glands of the axilla become sore, or
in cases of alveolar abscess the lymphatics of the angle of
the neck become sore and swollen. Now, these are instances
of poisons being absorbed by the lymphatics, and passing
through the lymph channels, they cause inflammation of the
first glands in their track. Usually these are of little conse-
quence, except the annoyance they occasion. The inflamma-
tion is due purely to the septic poison that is absorbed from
the focus of suppuration or inflammation, and usually there
are no micro-organisms in this track of absorption ; conse-
quently, it will be only a passing inflammatory movement.
It occasionally happens, however, that pus micro-organisms
are conveyed along the lymph channels, and in this case we
are liable to have suppuration of these glands. This only
occurs now and then, but when it does occur we are liable to
have a number of abscesses occurring one after the other
along "the track of the lymphatics, and having their begin-
ning, usually, in the lymphatic glands ; these we call metastatic
abscesses. Sometimes these conditions become very grave.
In a case that occurred in a friend of mine, a surgeon who

cut upon his finger during an operation, it became infected,
the infection spread up through the lymph spaces, was ab-
sorbed into the blood and a general fever set in ; abscesses
began to occur in the arm, in the axilla, in the chest, upon
the back, and it was a pretty difficult thing to save the man's
life. Before he was through with it he had a cut from the
center of the sternum clear around, cutting the muscles
through, to nearly the center of the back, searching out and
draining out pus from these abscesses. He recovered, how-
ever, with considerable shortening of the muscles and a par-
tial use of the arm.
The word antiseptic is also one of this group, and means
simply opposed to sepsis—denotes any drug that acts to
prevent decomposition. With this word you are sufficiently
well acquainted. The word was in use long before we knew
anything of micro-organisms.
Infection is the conveyance of micro-organisms to any-
thing whatever, animate or inanimate. We may infect the
man or the animal artificially from cultures of micro-organ-
isms. We may become infected from micro-organisms float-
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