Annual Report for 1912 of Royal Veterinary College. 273 



is confirmed the local authority have the power to require the 

 detention and treatment of diseased animals and of animals 

 that have been exposed to risk of contagion. 



Contagious Abortion. 



The Departmental Committee which was appointed by the 

 President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries in 1905 to 

 en(juire into epizootic abortion in cattle found that the common, 

 if not the exclusive, cause of multiple cases of aboi'tion occur- 

 ring in the same herd in Great Britain was a very minute 

 bacillus, identical with the one which Professor Bang had 

 previousl}' proved to be the cause of epizootic abortion in cattle 

 in Denmark. This fact having been determined, the Committee 

 devoted a good deal of attention to the question of diagnosis, 

 for it was obvious that in the absence of some reliable method 

 of distinguishing between cases of contagious and non- 

 contagious abortion there was little prospect of being able to 

 grapple successfully with the disease. The Committee found 

 that what is termed the agglutination method of diagnosis 

 promised to be of great service in this connection, Init the 

 observations and experiments made by the Committee were not 

 sufficiently numerous to justify a hard and fast conclusion as 

 to the absolute reliability of the method in actual practice. 

 01)servations which have since been made by the writer, in 

 conjunction with Sir Stewart Stockman, Principal Veterinary 

 Ofiicer to the Board of Agriculture, have proved that the test is 

 one of very great value. 



Briefly stated, the nature of the test is as follows : In the 

 case of some bacterial diseases certain substances appear in 

 the blood of the affected animal, which have a remarkable 

 affinity for the bacteria under whose agency they have been 

 produced, that is to say, the substances which appear in the 

 animal have a marked tendency to combine with or to act iipon 

 the bacteria which are the cause of the disease in question. 

 Among these substance are the so-called " agglutinins," the 

 presence of which can be detected in the animal's blood in 

 the following manner. A small quantity of blood is withdrawn 

 from a vein of the diseased or suspected animal, and this blood 

 is allowed to coagulate and express the clear watery liquid 

 which is termed serum. A quantity of artificial culture of the 

 particular bacterium is rubbed up or shaken up with water so 

 as to make the latter uniformly and only slightly hazy or 

 turbid, the turbidity being due to the bacteria suspended in the 

 mixture. When a small quantity of such a bacterial mixture 

 is set aside in a test tube it will often retain its haziness for 

 several days or even longer. To such a tube of bacterial mix- 

 ture one adds some of the above-mentioned blood serum from 



