$78 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
thoroughly moistened, softened, and partially dissoived in the five cases 4 
in which a solution was used. In the sixth case the thin slice was only — 
kept in the fumes of the burning sulphur for five minutes. In all cases 
a portion cf the disinfectant was necessarily introduced into the wound 
along with the virulent agent. In four out of the six pigs the disease 
developed and ran its course as shown in the table, the disinfectants 
thus proving ineffectual being carbolic acid, sulphate of iron, sulphurous 
acid, and chloride of lime. 
The pig inoculated with virus, treated with bisulphite of soda, died on 
the seventh day, evidently from lung-worms, and without any distinct 
symptoms of the plague. There remains the possibility that had it lived 
longer these would have appeared. 
One agent only out of the six can be set down as having proved an 
efficient disinfectant as used, namely, the chloride of zinc. The virus 
treated with this agent, produced no appreciable illness; and though the 
pig’s temperature was raised on the fourth, sixth, and ninth days, this 
was probably accidental, as it showed no tendency to become permanent. 
Finally, two pigs were subjected to a hypodermic injection of a few drops 
of the blood of a diseased subject, mixed in a dram of a solution of 
permanganate of potassa for the one, and of bromide of ammonium for 
the other. Both inoculations took effect, and one of the pigs thus in- 
fected furnished the blood which conveyed disease to the sheep, rabbit, 
and dog, as recorded above. | 
NATURE OF THE HOG FEVER. 
Though long confounded with typhoid fever, anthrax (malignant pus- 
tule), erysipelas, measles, scarlatina, &c., this malady is distinct from all 
of them. In my report for 1875 I pointed out my reasons for declining 
to recognize in it either of the above maladies, and claiming it to be “a 
disease sui generis”; and this position has been fully indorsed by the 
recent researches of Klein, Osler, and others, as weil as by my own ex- 
periments. ‘This affection may be defined as a specific, contagious fever 
of swine, characterized by a high but variable temperature, by conges- 
tion, exudation, ecchymosis, and ulceration of the intestinal mucous mem- 
brane, especially that of the cecum and colon, and, to a less extent, of 
the stomach; by congestions and exudations in the lungs in the form of 
lobular pneumonia; by general heat and redness of the skin, the latter | 
effaceable by pressure; by darker red and black spots unaffected by 
pressure; by a papular eruption and abundant dark sebaceous exuda- 
tion; by ecchymosis on the mucous and serous membranes generally; by 
swelling and ecchymosis of the lymphatic glands; by irregularity of the 
bowels, costiveness alternating with a fetid diarrhea; and perhaps most 
important of all, by the presence of colonies of minute globular micro- 
cocci in the various seats of morbid change. : 
An experiment of Dr. Klein, in 1877, in which he cultivated the miero- 
coccus for seven successive generations in the aqueous humor taken from 
the eyes of rabbits, using only a speck on the point of a needle to inceu- 
late every new portion of the humor, and finally inoculated the product 
of the fifth and seventh generations successfully on two pigs, seems to 
establish that these microphytes are the ultimate cause of the disease. 
My own experiment, in which the disease was conveyed by blood that 
had been kept for eleven days in an incubator at the temperature of the 
body, goes to support the same conclusion; but I hope still to subject 
this question to a more crucial test. If we accept this hypothesis of the 
pathogenic action of the bacteria, it would almost of necessity follow 
