Circular No. 157. issued May lo, 1912. 



United States Department of Agriculture, 



BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY. 

 L. O. HOWARD, Entomologist and Chief of Bureau. 



THE CAUSE OF EIROPEAX FOUL BROOD. 



By a. F. White. :M. D., Ph. D., 



Expert ill Bacteriology. 



HISTORICAL. 



The purpose of this preliminary paper is to discuss briefly the ex- 

 citing cause of European foul brood. 



With diseased material furnished by Cheshire, Cheyne made a 

 bacteriological study of foul brood. The latter isolated and described 

 a bacterium from the brood dead of the disease and identified it as 

 Bacillus alvei. Cheshire agreed that the identification was correct. 

 A joint paper by these men appeared in 1885, and for about a decade 

 and a half thereafter Bacillus alvei was generally considered to l^e 

 the cause of foul brood. The disease which, it is believed, Cheyne 

 studied is the one that has received the designation European foul 

 brood. 



This disease is also believed to be the one which William R. Howard 

 worked upon and named " black brood." In 1000 he described as 

 its cause a bacterium to which he gave the name Bacillus milii. 



It is probable that Burri in 1906 was studying the same disease in 

 Switzerland when he referred to " sour brood." In the disease he dis- 

 covered a bacterium to which he referred as the " guntheri-iorms.'' 



Maassen in 1907, working probably with the same disease, appar- 

 ently encountered the " r/nnfhe7^i-iorms " reported by Burri and 

 named the new species Streptococcus apis. 



SOME EARLIER WORK BY THE WRITER ON EUROPEAN FOUL BROOD. 



In 1907 the writer observed in European foul brood the bacterium 

 which had been named Streptococcus apis. It was observed at the 

 same time that there was ^jresent also another microorganism quite 



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