intestine. The conditions
are now ripe and rife for auto-infection. Which of the following
microbes are the most active agents of progressive auto-infection: the
streptococcus lanceolatus, the bacterium pyogenes, the bacillus
subtilis, the staphylococci, the bacterium coli commune? They all play
a part in the game, reducing the body in time to a charnel-house. Or
are such substances as putrescein, cadaverin, skatol or indol--which
are derived through chemical change in the putrescent mass--contributors
to the spread of the poisonous taint throughout the system? Any single
one or a group of the fifty or more bacterial poisons may be the
responsible agents in the ensuing auto-infection. Chemical analysis of
the gases resulting from decomposition reveals oxygen, nitrogen,
hydrogen, carbonic acid, protocarbonated hydrogen and sulphureted
hydrogen, ammonia, and sulphate of ammonia. Leucin, tyrosin, lithic
acid, lithates, xanthin, cystin, keratin, sulphureted hydrogen, etc.,
are deposits in the urine and are signs of the derangement of the
intestinal canal and liver. The external symptoms observed are the
following: the tongue is large, pale, flabby and indented by the teeth
at the edge of the anterior third, while its surface is white and the
papillae often enlarged; the appetite may be excellent, though there is
great functional derangement of the liver with lithemia, so that the
sufferer is tempted to eat what he knows from experience will disagree
with him; a bitter coppery taste in the mouth, due to taurocholic
acid--a common symptom of lithemia or of imperfect oxidation of
albumen; emaciation, fatigue, depression, headache, buzzing in the ears
and deafness, disturbance of sight, loss of memory, faintness and
vertigo, very marked in some cases; sometimes tenderness and pain under
the cartilages of the right ribs; the fretting of the sensitive surface
of the bowels by imperfectly digested, semi-putrescent food, resulting
sometimes in convulsions, coma, paralysis, or in fetid diarrhea of an
acid character producing a burning sensation or pain of the anus when
the discharges are being passed; rumbling and twisting sensations in
the region of the navel occurring with flatulency, and occasionally
colicky pains which at times are so severe as to simulate poisoning.

In some people certain articles of food, without being either toxic or
putrid, induce indigestion and the production of microbes in quantity
amounting to one thir