I 



CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 83 



mild attacks the period of incubation was but two or three days, and 

 that in at least one case there was a rise of temperature within twenty- 

 four hours [Ibid., p. ^3), the appearances are certainly very much more 

 in favor of septic.emia than swine plague. Certain it is that in none of 

 my numerous inoculation experiments has there been a rise of temper- 

 ature within so short a time. As I write this I have just returned from 

 making Apost mortem examination of a pig killed in the last stages of 

 the acute form of the disease ; this was one of a lot of three inoculated 

 with a virus so virulent that not one of a considerable number of swine 

 that have been inoculated with it during the last three months has re- 

 covered. With so virulent a virus one would expect the incubation to 

 be at its shortest duration, and yet neither of these three showed any 

 appreciable signs of disease up to the twelfth day. All sickened at 

 about the same time, and to-day, the fifteenth day, all were so extremely 

 ill that the most careful j^rognosis would be death of all within forty- 

 eight hours. 



In animals whicli have died from the disease and on which a ponts 

 mortem exainiimtion was not possible immediately after death, I have 

 also found bacilli in the ]teritoneal and plural effusion, and even in the 

 blood. A photograph of some of the peritoneal effusion dried on a 

 cover-glass at the time of the autoi)sy, and afterward stained and 

 mounted, shows these very plainly ; this photograph has been repro- 

 duced by the heliocaustic process and accompanies this report as Plate 

 XII. Xo doubt l)acilli would also have been found in the solid tissues 

 of this animal ; but these organisms were the result of cliauges which 

 occur either shortl3^ before or after death, and have not been found 

 in any of the numerous animals which I have destroyed for examina- 

 tion when in the earlier stages of the disease. In such cases the peri- 

 toneal, the pleural, and the pericardial effusions, and usually the blood 

 are found to contain motionless micrococci of the figure of-eight form, 

 but often united in chains and various-shaped clusters. 



In the many cultivations which I have made from material obtained 

 from slaughtered animals I have never found bacilli except in a very 

 few cases where the virus was not obtained until after contact with the 

 air, where the vacuum tubes had not been properly sealed, or where 

 the animal was not slaughtered until the last stages of the disease. A 

 photograph of a j^reparation made from one of these cultivations is re- 

 produced in Plate XT. It seems to be a })erfectly pure cultivation of 

 micrococci so far as careful examination with the microscope is able to 

 determine, and it was so virulent that three pigs iiu)culated with it all 

 contracted the disease and all died. 



In my most recent investigations I 11 nd that the peritoneal effusion 

 is often impure in the last stages of the disease. In such cases a vari- 

 ety of organisms ai»pear in the cultivations made with this li(piid, but 

 l)ure cultures of micrococci are still obtained from the pleural eftusion, 

 or in those rare cases where this too is impure the i)ericar(lial tliiid and 



