526 CLINICAL VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 



bacilli, and we had every reason to believe that he was affected with 

 chronic bronchitis. In another we learned that at the time of the 

 outbreak the fowls were under the charge of a young woman who after 

 showing cough and expectoration for more than a year, had become 

 thin and was regarded as suffering from tuberculosis. 



In only one of the attacks were we justified in supposing that the 

 birds had been inoculated by the sputum of a phthisical patient, as 

 in the cases related by Bollinger, Nocard, Mollereau, Chelchowski, 

 de Lemalleree, Durieux, and Cagny. In no case were we led to 

 suspect the ingestion of milk, or meat, from tuberculous animals, as 

 in MM. Guerrin and Baivy's cases. 



When tuberculosis is imported by new birds, these die first, and 

 the disease afterwards attacks others. The mischief is rarely con- 

 fined to a few, or to one fowl, as, however, happened in one of our 

 cases ; usually it extends successively to a large number ; sometimes 

 it continues for years (four years in one of our cases), and ends by 

 completely clearing the run. 



The owners of these badly infected fowl runs not infrequently sell 

 the surviving birds, which being thus distributed among healthy 

 subjects communicate the disease to them. 



The contaminated fowl runs are afterwards cleansed, disinfected, 

 and restocked, but even when they have remained empty for several 

 months the new birds, though at first healthy, soon become ill and die 

 of tuberculosis. 



Observation of these epizootics leaves no room for questioning the 

 contagious character of tuberculosis in fowls. Contagion occurs 

 through the medium of the intestinal dejections, which in some cases 

 contain very large numbers of bacilli. Being ingested with the food 

 the bacilli pass through the intestine and gain the peritoneum, liver, 

 spleen, and in rare cases other organs. In about half the cases the 

 passage of bacilli through the intestinal wall leaves no trace. 

 Under such circumstances the intestinal contents are probably free of 

 bacilli, and the birds are incapable of transmitting tuberculosis. But 

 in other instances inoculation is marked by the intestine itself 

 becoming tuberculous and ulcerated. The dejections are then rich in 

 bacilli, the distribution of which over the ground explains the 

 propagation of disease. 



III.— SYMPTOMS AND PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY. 



Symptoms. — The signs indicative of tuberculosis in fowls are, during 

 life, usually very vague. The birds become progressively thinner, and 



