BOOK REVIEW 



Der Erreger der Maul — und Klauenseuche. By Dr. Heinrich Stauf- 



FACHER. Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1915. 57 pages, 29 text 



figures and 2 plates. M 2.80. 



The cause of hoof and mouth disease of cattle has been variously 

 assigned, usually on a priori grounds, to bacteria, protozoa, and to 

 ultra-microscopic organisms, but no one except the author of the present 

 work has succeeded in satisfying the necessary postulates for the de- 

 terinination of a disease-causing parasite. Dr. Stauffacher of Frauen- 

 feld, Switzerland, has found definite bodies in the blood and diseased 

 tissues of every animal with the disease examined ; he has grown these 

 bodies in the condensation water of blood agar culture media and has 

 observed many developmental stages; he has inoculated normal cattle 

 with the organisms from the artificial cultures and produced the dis- 

 ease in such previously unaffected animals, and he has recovered the 

 organisms from the diseased tissues of the inoculated animal. 



Students of hoof and mouth disease have been bull-dozed by author- 

 ity into the view that the cause must be ultra-microscopic, first, be- 

 cause no trace of organisms can be found in diseased tissues treated 

 and stained by the ordinary technical methods, and second, because 

 the virus passes through the ordinary filters. When no less an authority 

 than Loffler implies that it is a waste of time to look for the organisms 

 of hoof and mouth disease with a microscope, it is to be expected that 

 only those investigators who have authority-proof minds will under- 

 take the task. Such men do not forget the history of Treponema 

 pallidum. Nor is the fact that the virus of hoof and mouth disease 

 will pass through a filter, necessary evidence of ultra-microscopic size; 

 trypanosomes, to say nothing of spirochaetes, pass through ordinary 

 bacteria filters. 



Stauffacher seems to have such an authority-proof mind; he argued 

 that the organisms must be in the infected tissues, and that the fact 

 of their not taking the ordinary stains is no guarantee that they may 

 not stain with altered methods. So after vainly trying to stain sections 

 with haematoxylin, fuchsin-methylen-blue, and other anilin combina- 

 tions, finding no characteristic chromatin reaction in the infected cells, 

 either in the nuclei or cytoplasm, he substituted acid fuchsin for the 

 ordinary fuchsin and found, as Zschokke had found before, that in- 

 fected tissues take up more acid fuchsin than do normal tissues. Even 

 with this modification however, he was unable to get any trace of 

 basichromatin material either in the nuclei or in the cell bodies. Finally, 

 after "months of study of thousands of sections" he discovered the im- 

 portant secret of treatment, after which the nuclei again took up the 



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