FOWL PLAGUE 447 



engaged in attempts to devise an effective method of protecting 

 cattle against hoof-and-mouth disease by injecting simultaneously an 

 immune serum and virulent lymph, but up to the present time no 

 efficient method seems to have been worked out. The last method 

 recommended by Loeffler requires four different inoculations. Casper, 

 who has reviewed the subject, concludes that there is yet no method 

 of appreciable value in practice, and that the whole subject is still in 

 an experimental stage. 



DISTEMPER IN DOGS. 



Distemper in dogs, dog plague, dog ill, "Hundeseuche" (German), 

 Pasteurellosis canum, "Maladie du jeune age" (French), is an acute, 

 contagious disease of young carnivora, particularly of dogs, character- 

 ized by an acute catarrh of the upper respiratory passages, often 

 associated with a catarrhal pneumonia. In fatal cases the mucous 

 membranes of the nose, larynx and bronchi are reddened, swollen 

 and covered with an abundant fibrinous exudate. The finest bron- 

 chioles are filled with a purulent material and the pulmonary paren- 

 chyma exhibits smaller or larger areas of consolidation. The pleura 

 of such diseased portions of lung is often covered with a slight fibrin- 

 ous exudate. The gastric and intestinal mucosa is swollen and 

 reddened, the mediastinal and mesenteric glands are swollen. The 

 heart, liver, and kidneys show evidences of parenchymatous degen- 

 eration. In some cases the spinal cord shows disseminated inflam- 

 matory foci (myelitis disseminata). Ligniere claimed to have dis- 

 covered a bipolar bacillus (Pasteurella canis) as the cause of dog 

 distemper, but his claim has not been confirmed. Jess also claimed 

 the discovery of a bacillus as the cause of distemper, but his work 

 likewise has not been confirmed. It appears rather that the disease is 

 due to an ultramicroscopic filterable virus. None of the vaccines and 

 sera against dog distemper which have from time to time appeared 

 have proved efficient. 



FOWL PLAGUE. 



Fowl plague, pestis gall ina rum, pestis avium, "Huhnerpest" 

 (German), "peste aviaire" (French), is an acute contagious disease 

 of chickens, which has formerly generally been confounded with 

 chicken or fowl cholera. It is, however, a distinct disease, not due, 

 like chicken cholera, to a bacterium of the hemorrhagic septicemia 

 group, but to an ultramicroscopic filterable virus. The latter is 

 present in the blood, the secretion from the nose, the feces, the 

 serous exudates, and the bile of sick birds. Infection can be pro- 

 duced artificially by inoculation of exceedingly small doses of blood 

 (0.000001 c.c.). Blood kept in fused glass tubes in a cool, dark 



