Septicemia Hemorrhagica of Bovine Animals. 57 



Vitality of the microbe. Simple drying destroys virulence in 

 six to twenty-two days. Virulence is retained for nine days in 

 putrid flesh. It is preserved, and the microbe multiplies in soil 

 or water containing organic matter and nitrates. It is easily 

 destroyed by ordinary antiseptics 1:5000 of mercuric chloride des- 

 troying its vitality in one minute (Hueppe). On the contrary it 

 shows a great resistance to changes of temperature. It grows in 

 the soil at 55 to 6o° F. (Hueppe), and in old cultures may 

 resist for an hour a temperature of 175 to 195 (Oreste and 

 Armanni). 



Accessory Causes. These are such conditions as favor transmis- 

 sion of, or receptivity to the microbe. In Southern France the 

 disease is most common in the winter months, probably because 

 the soil water rises then ; on the Roman marshes on the other 

 hand, it prevails especially from May to October, when the water 

 is lowest and most impure. In New York I have seen it especi- 

 ally at the breaking up of the winter frosts, when the water, pent 

 up in the rich organic soils, is suddenly released. It is pre-emi- 

 nently the disease of wet soils, rich in the debris of decomposing 

 organic matter, of the rich prairies and bottom lands of the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley, of springy, swampy or mucky soils elsewhere, 

 of the Pontine marshes at Rome, of the Delta of the Nile, of the 

 rich virgin soils in Asia. Youth has the greatest receptivity, the 

 older animals having probably acquired immunity through an 

 earlier attack. The animals that live in herds infect each other 

 by contact, fighting, licking, etc., others are affected by eating 

 the vegetation or drinking the water soiled by the diseased, wild 

 boars by eating the carcasses, and all animals by the attacks of bit- 

 ing or blood-sucking insects which have just come from the dis- 

 eased. It is claimed that the infection is carried by men and ani- 

 mals, and by the sale in villages of the flesh of infected animals. 

 Dogs, wolves, foxes, and other carnivorous animals and birds will 

 also carry the infection for long distances. Finally, it will travel 

 to a greater or lesser distance with running water. 



The entrance of the microbe by wounds must always be counted 

 on, and explains the casual inoculations, by bites of dogs, in- 

 sects, worms, by barbed wire fences, by wounds with horns, 

 tusks, or feet, by nails, etc., and in winter by hard, woody ali- 

 ment scratching the lips, mouth, fauces or pharynx. Shedding 



