352 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
ease are, to say the least, enveloped in mystery and cannot be explained. 
What Professor Beale calls bioplasm could not be discovered under the 
microscope. 
In want of a better name I have called the bacilli “ bacilli suis,” be- | 
cause the same, as far as I have been able to learn, are peculiar to and | 
characteristic of swine-plague. The bacillus-germs are small round 
bodies of—as near as I can figure without the aid of a micrometer— 
about 0.0007 millimeter diameter, and reflect the light very strongly. 
The bacilli suis are small, almost straight, cylindrical bodies of about ° 
0.003 to 0.005 millimeter in length, and 0.0007 to 0.0008 millimeter in 
thickness, sometimes moving and sometimes without motion, and in cer- 
tain stages of development slightly moniliform, but in others apparently 
not. (See drawings.) 
The causes.—W hether the disease is caused exclusively by infection— 
by the bacilli and their germs being conveyed directly or indirectly from 
diseased animals to healthy ones—or whether those bacilli swis and their 
germs can be produced independently from, and outside of, the organ- 
ism of swine; whether, in other words, swine-plague is a pure contagion, 
caused exclusively by means of the infectious or contagious principle, 
or can develop spontaneously, is a very important question, which can 
be solved only by protracted experiments, and may not be solved at all 
until the question as to whether a ‘‘generatio equivoca” is possible or 
actually taking place or not has found a definite solution. If the bacilli 
suis and their germs constitute the sole cause of swine-plague, as they 
undoubtedly do, the disease must be considered as a pure contagion, 
like many other contagious or infectious diseases, not capable of a pro- 
topathic or spontaneous development, as long as the possibility of a 
“generatio equivoca” is denied, but if the latter is admitted, or proved 
to be taking place, a spontaneous development must be considered not 
only as possible but also as very probable. 
If the conclusions I have arrived at concerning the cause of the dis- 
ease are correct, and I have scarcely any doubt they are, the question 
as to the causes has been solved. Still, as a positive knowledge of the 
true cause or causes is of the greatest importance, and as my experi- 
ments are not numerous enough to be absolutely conclusive, further 
investigations and more experiments of the same, or of similar kind, will 
be very desirable, and, indeed, necessary, in order to obtain absolute 
certainty as to the true nature of the cause or causes. 
One thing I am sure of, and that is that an exclusive corn diet, as has 
been asserted by several agricultural writers, wallowing in dirt and 
nastiness, starvation, in.and in breeding, &c., although by no means 
calculated to promote health or to invigorate the animal organism, can 
not constitute the cause and cannot produce a solitary case of swine- 
plague, unless the infectious principles (the bacilli and their germs) are 
present. If they are, then, of course, dirt and nastiness, consumptior 
of unclean food and of dirty’ water, facilitate an infection, and warmtl 
and moisture, pregnant with organic substances, or organic substance: 
in a State of decay, are undoubtedly well calculated to preserve thi 
bacillus-germs and to develop the bacilli. 
Whether the disease can be communicated to other animals beside 
swine or not, is a question I am trying at present to decide. Some tim 
ago I had an occasion to throw away some morbid tissues (parts of dis 
eased lungs) of a diseased hog, which I had used for microscopical ex 
amination. I threw them—very carelessly, I admit—into an empty le 
full of rank weeds, across the road. About a week after several chicken 
(four or five) died in the neighborhood, of so-called “ chicken-cholera 
