88 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



author states, for the express purpose of enabling the American hog raiser 

 to malve his own serum and to vaccinate his own hogs. 



Suptol-burow and swine plague, W. Gottschalk (Berlin. Tlerarzth 

 Wchnschr., 27 (1911), ISlo. I'l, pp. 287, 238).— In the hands of this author the 

 preparation gave good results. 



Dourine of horses: Its cause and suppression, J. R. Mohler ([/. S. Dept. 

 Agr., Bur. Anim. Indus. Bui. 142, pp. 38, pis. 5). — This is a report of studies 

 following an outbreak of dourine in Taylor County, Iowa, in May, 1911. The 

 causative agent, Trypanosoma equiperdiim, was observed by the author on 

 June 28, in blood-tinged serum obtained from a recently developed plaque on 

 the abdomen of an infected mare, after a careful and prolonged examination 

 of a large number of slides, this being the first discovery of T. equiperdiim in 

 natural cases of dourine in the United States. 



In this country dourine was first recognized at Bloomington, 111., in 1886, 

 when it was traced to a Percheron stallion imported from France in 1882. 

 In 1892 another outbreak occurred in northwestern Nebraska, probably orig- 

 inating from that in Illinois, and although supposed to have been eradicated 

 five years later it again appeared in the same portion of Nebraska and later 

 in South Dakota. In 1903, the disease was discovered in Van Buren County, 

 Iowa, where it had been apparently introduced with an imported Percheron 

 stallion, and in 1904 its presence was discovered in Canada. 



A report is presented of studies of the disease, including a search for and 

 cultivation of T. cqmperdurn, its infectiveness, symptoms, post-mortem lesions, 

 prognosis, course, differential diagnosis, treatment, and method of eradication. 

 During the investigations a case was met in which the American disease was 

 transmitted by a stallion indirectly from an infected to a normal mare. Both 

 the American and the European disease were transmitted by subcutaneous 

 inoculations of infected blood. The length of time which this protozoan lives 

 when kept in blood or body fluids taken from dead animals has been found to 

 vary considerably. In the blood of an infected dog imported from France, as 

 well as in physiologic salt solution emulsions of the liver and spleen, the para- 

 sites have been found actively motile on the second day and a few still observed 

 on the third day, but on the fourth day none have been found, showing that they 

 were all destroyed between 72 and 96 hours after the death of the host. By 

 the continued inoculation of a medium composed of 3 parts of blood to 1 

 of agar with great numbers of the organism, it was successfully cultivated, 14 

 generations, covering a period of over 9 months, having beeh grown and no diffi- 

 culty experienced in keeping the trypanosomes alive by frequently transferring 

 them to fresh medium. The inoculation of experimental animals with these cul- 

 tiu-es seems to indicate that there was some reduction in their virulence, but too 

 small a number of inoculations have been made to draw definite conclusions. 



Little benefit can be obtained from the medicinal treatment, although some 

 cases have been observed where improvement and recovery followed local treat- 

 ment when applied in the early stages of the infection. When, however, any 

 systemic symptoms appear, drugs seem to be useless and deaths follow after 

 very varying periods of time in different cases. The method of eradication in- 

 cluded the slaughter of diseased mares, castration or slaughter of diseased stal- 

 lions, castration or quarantine of exposed stallions, and the frequent reinspec- 

 tion of exposed mares. 



The action of phenols upon " virus fixe " of rabies, W. J. Sawtschenko 

 {Kharkov. Med. Jour., 10 {1910). No. 8, pp. 266-270; abs. in Ztschr. Immunitdtsf. 

 u. Expt. Ther., II, Bef., 3 {1910), No. 13, p. 1109).— The results show that the 

 stronger solutions of phenol (up to 5 per cent) do not destroy the virus. A 



