BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 517 



bacterium of swine-plague corresponding to the form which, he first d«- 

 scribed.* It is idle, however, to speculate whether Pasteur actually,' 

 studied two kinds of microbes until we know whether the form of swine 

 l)lague prevailing in this country exists in France also. Klein's exhaust- 

 ive report on swine plague (Seventh Aunual Eeport of the Local Gov- 

 ernment Board, 1877-'7S, supplement, pp. 108-281), though excellent 

 as regards histological and pathological details, need not be considered 

 here, as the methods adopted in the bacteriological investigations were 

 such as cannot command our confidence today. We have already 

 pointed out the fact that in advanced cases of swine plague the perito- 

 neal cavity, thoracic cavity, and even blood taken from the heart con- 

 tain various kinds of bacteria. This fact Klein did not perceive, noi 

 does ho mention it in a more recent publication. Suffice it to state that 

 he failed to cultivate or detect any bacilli in the spleen of animals suf- 

 fering from swine plague (Oj?. cit., p. 210). Our own iuA'CStigatious show 

 that the spleen contains the bacterium of swine plague, excepting in 

 cases of long standing disease. 



In the more recent article mentioned above [ArcTi.f. path. Anaf., XQV, 

 188-4, pp. 468-185), Klein describes a new series of experiments on swine 

 plague in which he fails to produce the disease in pigeons, and regards 

 Pasteur's cultures contaminated with the microbe of fowl-cholera, be- 

 cause the latter considered pigeons susceptible. It is now evident that 

 Pasteur at that time was cultivating the bacillus of roiigct, which is fatal 

 to pigeons. Klein describes in this article a new organism, differing 

 from the spore-bearing leptothrix-like bacillus first described by him, 

 which was, without doubt, some contaminating microbe, although ho 

 fails to perceive or acknowledge the difference. The now organism, as 

 far as we can gather from the text, resembles somewhat the one de- 

 scribed in the preceding pages. It is motile, from 1 to 5 micromilli- 

 meters long, but is spore-bearing, a characteristic which the bacterium 

 of swine-plague seems to lack. In cultures it is commonly 2 to 3 micro- 

 millimeters long, and appears either isolated, in i3airs or in chains of 

 three. According to his statement pigeons are wholly insusceptible to 

 it. He, however, failed to define the characters more minutely by cul- 

 .tivation on difl'erent substrata, so that we are left in doubt whether the 

 microbe liquefies gelatine or not, whether it multiplies on potato or in 

 milk, and whether the liquid cultures made did actually contain but 

 one kind of microbe. 



The most recent investigations in Germany t concern themselves 

 chiefly with the disease termed Eothlavf and identical with roi^get in 

 France. There is a tacit assumption that this disease and the one de- 

 scribed by Klein as pneumo-enteritis (which is the disease prevailing in 

 this country) are -identical. It is hoped that in the preceding pages the 

 radical diflerence between these diseases has been permanently estab- 

 lished. There seems at present no reason for doubting the results of 

 the foreign investigations which regard the delicate bacillus, cultivated 

 as a vaccine by Pasteur, as the cause of rouget or RothUmf. In en- 

 deavoring to obtain from descriptions a clear idea of this disease as it 

 exists on the continent, wo have found many lesions common to the two 



'From oui! own experiments but a small portion of pigeons soem susceptible to tho 

 virus of the s-wino plague introduced beneath the skin in minute doses, while they in- 

 variably succumb to the bacillus of ro\iget. 



t Loffler : ExpcrimenieUe Uniersucliungen iiher Schtveine-Eothlaiif, Arbeitena. d. Kaiser- 

 lichen GesundJnils amte, Erster Band. S. 4G. Schiitz : Ueher den liothlauf der Schiceine 

 urtd die Impfunq desselben, Op. dt., S. 56. Lydtia u. Schottelius : Ber Eothlauf der 

 Schweine, seine Entstehung und VerhUtung, 1885. 



