72 EGBERT GRAHAM AND HERMAN R. SCHWARZE 



of fact the cause of the disease as it occurs throughout the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley has been satisfactorily established in but few 

 outbreaks. Notwithstanding negative findings relative to the 

 cause or causes involved, the recurrence of a clinical toxemic-like 

 disease in cattle in the feed lots and pastures of Illinois and 

 other middle western states lends evidence to the possibility of a 

 distinct entity of forage poisoning, based upon our clinical con- 

 ception of food poisoning in other domestic animals, i.e., in 

 horses and mules (Graham, Brueckner and Pontius (1917) ). In 

 these animals the cause of death in several sporadic outbreaks 

 has apparently been definitely associated with certain types of B. 

 hotulinus intoxication, as demonstrated by bacteriological find- 

 ings in the feed and confirmed by the apparent protective value 

 of specific antitoxin in susceptible animals receiving contami- 

 nated rations. 



Feeding expermients (Rusk and Grindley (1918) ) have been 

 conducted by different investigators in an attempt to reproduce 

 the disease in cattle. An accomplishment of this character would 

 obviously afford an oportunity to inaugurate more definite 

 and extended bacteriological studies, looking to the establish- 

 ment of an etiologic factor. Experimental results in cattle 

 feeding projects, together with the natural resistance of some 

 animals accompanied by the abrupt or irregular termination of 

 the spontaneous fatal disease in natural outbreaks, have in a 

 broad sense failed to incriminate the rations specifically. How- 

 ever, in many outbreaks it appeared that the causative factor or 

 factors were related to, if not incorporated in the feed. With 

 this conception of the etiological relation of the feed to the 

 disease, bacteriological studies have been extended to numerous 

 samples of feed from suspicious outbreaks of this disease. The 

 possibility of the disease or diseases encountered being associated 

 with Pasteurella boviseptica, or toxic aerobes of the colon-typhoid 

 group prompted animal inoculation and cultural methods to 

 eliminate these microorganisms in tissue specimens. 



Moulds have been mentioned in a more or less definite way in 

 connection with forage poisoning in cattle and horses. A variety 

 of these organisms have been encountered upon animal feeds 



