82 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 



and continuoxis layers of them ; the free siirface icas covered with them, and 

 the exudation fidd icas charged with them. Their jiresence iu tbe pleural 

 effusion is sufficient evidence that cross-section of bacilli had not been 

 mistaken for micrococci in the tissues; and it may, consequently, be 

 accepted as beyond question that this organism existed at the points 

 named in the report of 1876. 



In the last report it is stated that the rods (bacilli) are found " in the 

 bronchial exudation, in the juice of the lung tissue, in the peritoneal 

 exudation, and occasionally, but not generally, also in the blood already 

 in the fresh state." Sections made through the fresh or hardened, 

 swollen mesenteric and inguinal lymph glands are said to reveal the 

 presence of clumps of the same minute rod-shaped organisms. Look- 

 lug at a clump of these organisms, one imagines them at first to be a 

 zooglo'a of micrococci, but using oil-immersion lenses and Abbe's sub- 

 stage condenser it becomes certain that they are undoubted rods — some 

 smooth and uniform, others more or less " beaded." 



In the results of the examination of the tissues it will be seen that, 

 with the exception of the lymph glands mentioned, the bacilli of the 

 last report have little if any advantage in situation over the micrococci 

 of the first report. And if we consider that the organisms of these 

 glands so closely resemble micrococci that it requires oil-immersion lenses 

 and an Abbe condenser to make a distinction, and that even under such 

 favorable conditions some of the rods are more or less " beaded," the 

 reader will not feel so certain that they are undoubted rods .as is Dr. 

 Klein. 



The examination of the tissues of mice and rabbits which have died 

 after inoculation with the more or less septic liquid of dead hogs can- 

 not be accepted as throwing any satisfactory light on so difticult a problem, 

 since others cannot fail to have the same doubts in regard to Dr. Klein's 

 experimental animals that this gentleman is so free to express in regard 

 to those of M. Pasteur. The question as to the organisms fouiul in the 

 tissues of animals so susceptible to various forms of septicaemia as mice 

 and rabbits after they have been iuoculated with morbid products from 

 hogs which have died of a disease in which local necrosis and gangrene 

 i^ not uncommon, is one which can only complicate the real issue with- J| 

 out in any sense elucidating it. Indeed, when Dr. Klein tells us that } 

 he. has " seen a good many pigs inoculated with culture of the bacterium 

 of swine fever, which beyond the swelling of the glands and beyond a 

 transitory riseof the body temperatuieon the second andthirdday, by one 

 or even two degrees C, showed no other sigus," we have strong suspi- 

 cions that the slight trouble produced was of a septic nature rather than 

 a mild attack of the destructive swine plague. The period of incubation 

 in swine plague is much longer than that of septicaemia ; sometimes it is S| 

 three weeks ; generally it is i'rom twelve days to two weeks, and it is only 

 by the use of enormous doses of virus that 1 have succeeded in reducing 

 it to four or five days ; and, therefore, when we are told that in these 



