ardens, who
scratch or cut themselves, are warned to report themselves promptly for
treatment with the tetanus antitoxin.

Apart from the tetanus germ, however, the problem of the treatment of
wounds--while there should be perfect cleanliness, the spotlessness of
the model housekeeper multiplied fivefold--is yet not so much a matter
of keeping dirt in general out of the wound, as of keeping out that
_particular form of dirt which consists of or contains, discharges from
some previous wound, sore, ulcer, or boil!_

While both these pus-organisms can breed and flourish freely only in
wounds or sores, this is but their starting-point where they gather
strength to invade the entire organism. We used to make a distinction
between those cases in which their toxins or poison-products got into
the blood, with the production of fever, headache, backache, delirium,
sweats, etc., which we term _septicaemia_, and other cases in which the
cocci themselves were carried into the blood and swept all over the body
by forming fresh foci, or breeding-places, which resulted in abscesses
all over the body, which we call _pyaemia_. But now we know that there is
no hard and fast line to be drawn, and that the germs get into the blood
much more easily than we supposed; and the degree and dangerousness of
the fever which they set up depend, first, upon their virulence, or
poisonousness, and, second, upon the resisting power of the patient at
the time. Anything which lowers the general health and strength and
weakens the resisting power of the body will make it much easier for
pus-germs to get an entrance into it, and overwhelm it; so that, after
prolonged famines for instance, or among the population of besieged
cities, or in armies or exploring expeditions which have been deprived
of food and exposed to great hardship, the merest scratch will fester
and inflame, and give rise to a serious and even fatal attack of
blood-poisoning, erysipelas, hospital gangrene, etc. Famines and sieges
in fact are not infrequently followed by positive epidemics of
blood-poisoning, often in exceedingly severe and fatal forms.

It was long ago noted by the chroniclers that the death-rate from
wound-fever among the soldiers of a defeated army was apt to be much
greater than among those of the victorious one, and this was quoted as
one of the stock evidences of the influence of mind over body. But we
now know that armies are not beaten without some physical cause,