412 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



cessible to diseased Logs. Most of the water examined under the mi- 

 croscope was taken from small runs, ravines, and pools of the hog pas- 

 tures of Messrs. Kennedy, Gilchrist, llice, and Morris, but samples from 

 other places have also been examined. The objectives used were a one- 

 ninth imm., or No. 8 Hartnack, a one-sixteenth imm., or ^o. 10 Hart- 

 nack, and a one-tenth oil or balsam-index imm. of Tolles, of recent 

 make and superior quality. The results, in all cases, have been essen- 

 tially the same. Besides some algse and other minute growths, I al- 

 ways found some globular and rod-shaped Schizomycetes, to all appear- 

 ances identical to those which occur invariably in the blood, lymph, ex- 

 udations, other morbid products, excrements, urine, &c., of the hogs 

 and pigs diseased with swine plague {cf. drawing. Fig. XYIII). It must 

 be stated, however, that every sample of water was taken from such a 

 place in the streamlets or pools where the water was known to have 

 been more or less defiled by diseased hogs. 



The blood, exudations, &c., of nearly every animal of which a post 

 mortem examination was made, were also subjected to a microscopical 

 examination. Special care was taken in every instance to collect the 

 blood directly out of a blood-vessel in perfectly clean, so-called homoe- 

 opathic vials, which were closed immediately with new corks. The re- 

 sults have been essentially the same as those obtained last winter {cf. 

 next chapter). 



The fact of finding globular and rod-shaped Schizomycetes, apparently 

 identical to those occurring in the diseased hogs, in all the samples of 

 water taken in i)erfectly clean vials from such small creeks, ravines, and 

 pools as had been used as drinldng and wallowing places of divseased 

 hogs, convinced me still more that a communication of swine plague 

 from one animal to another, and from one herd to another, is frequently, 

 and may be in a majority of cases, effected by means of the water for 

 drinking, if defiled by diseased hogs, or contaminated with the morbid 

 products of the disease or the carcasses of dead hogs. That such is the 

 case received additional proofs by the results of my experiments and 

 the good services of the carbolic acid and the hyposulphite of soda 

 mixed with the water for drinking, but particularly by the result of the 

 experiment with experimental pigs Kos. 1 and 2. If it were not so, the 

 carbolic acid especially, it must be supposed, could not have had much 

 effect. 



THE SCHIZOMYCETES. 



In my former reports I adopted the name of " Bacillus-sids " for those 

 globular and rod-shaped parasites of the Schizomycetes family which 

 are invariably found in the blood, the morbid products, the excretions, 

 the secretions, &c., of swine diseased with swine plague, and which, for 

 reasons stated in my previous reports, I am obliged to look upon as con- 

 stituting the infectious principle and the real cause of that disease, for 

 the following reasons : I called those Schizomycetes, when presenting 

 themselves in their rod-shaped or higher developed form, '^BacilW^ (lit- 

 tle sticks), partly on account of their stick -like shape, and partly on 

 account of their, in many respects, close relation and similarity — by 

 constituting the cause of an almost equally destructive disease — to the 

 well known " Bacillus anfliracis,^^ and I gave them the name " suis " from 

 sm (swine) as constituting the cause and infectious principle of a dis- 

 ease peculiar to that animal, though communicable, under favorable 

 circumstances, to others. I was then, however, not sufiiciently ac- 

 quainted with the exact classifications of the various disease-producing 

 Schizomycetes, as made by different European authors, such as Cohu, 



