682 REPORT OP THE COMMISSIONER OP AGRICULTURE. 



and siimmarized in tliis and the preceding report, that this new dis- 

 ease described Ly Schiitz has nothing in common with hog-cholera. 

 We regard tlie description of the disease as given in these reports as 

 the basis for this statement, becanse the hundreds of cases examined 

 in the laboratory were invariably associated with the same etiolog- 

 ical factor — the same bacterium which has been minutely described, 

 and which is at once distinguishable from the microbe described by 

 Schiitz. Leaving aside the many differences, a glance into the mi- 

 croscope will show us an actively motile bacterium on the one hand, 

 and on the other a non-motile bacterium. Our investigations have 

 already shown the existence of another bacterial disease in swine, 

 which may even be associated with hog-cholera, in the same herd 

 and in the same animal. From the present standpoint of our infor- 

 mation it would be presumably absurd to rely upon ^20s/ mortem es.- 

 aminations in different parts of the country without at the same time 

 making bacteriological investigations, in order to decide the nature 

 of a certain class of symptoms and lesions. We have almost invari- 

 ably found severe intestinal lesions in hog-cholera, producing ulcera- 

 tion and often complete death of the mucous membrane of the large 

 intestine, involving in the severest cases a similar destruction of 

 the mucous membrane of the ileum. In the autopsy notes given by 

 Schiitz the alimentary canal is invariably intact or the slight changes 

 due to general causes. The lesions are limited entirely to the tho- 

 racic organs, where the lungs are primarily affected by a ' ' multiple 

 mortifying pneumonia.'"' Thence the disease may involve the pleura 

 and the pericardium. 



In hog-cholera, lung lesions are quite secondary and only rarely 

 seen. In the severest hemorrhagic type of the disease we have 

 almost always observed hemorrhagic foci scattered through the lung 

 tissue, but these were no more numerous or more extensive than the 

 extravasations found in most of the other viscera. It is quite easy 

 to believe that such cases surviving the first severe attack may de- 

 velop a pneumonia by the gradual extension and confluence of the 

 separate foci. ' In 0-11 cases where the causation of such lesions is a 

 matter of doubt bacteriological investigation must now decide. 



JRelation of infectious pneumonia to this disease. — It is of con- 

 siderable importance to find out what relation this microbe of the 

 German Schweineseuclie bears to the one which we have recently 

 found in pigs a.s the cause of infectious pneumonia. IMorphologically 

 they are evidently the same. So far as their growth in culture media 

 and their biological proi:)erties have been obsei'ved there seem to be 

 no grounds for regarding them as different species. As to their path- 

 ogenic properties we find some marked differences. The evidence 

 which has been brought forward in the preceding images that the 

 microbe there described is the cause of a pneumonia in pigs, which 

 is therefore, from an etiological standpoint, wholly different from 

 hog-cholera, is not yet conclusive, and will rec[uire further investi- 

 gations. Yet the facts there recorded are strongly in favor of the 

 view that we are dealing with a hitherto unrecognized disease. The 

 microbe was obtained from three outbreaks hundreds of miles apart. 

 In the animals examined pneumonia was present. In the one out- 

 break hog-cholera was also present, as demonstrated by the lesions 

 and the specific ba,cterium. The jjresence in the same herd of two 

 diseases, and even in the same animal of two wholly different microbes 

 which produce them, complicates matters very greatly. The disease 

 described by Schiitz as Schiveineseuche is essentially a localized dis- 



