XXX. RESEARCHES ON AVIAN DIPHTHERIA.* 



By DR. BORDET. 



Dr. Fally and I have recently been studying the diphtheria of 

 hens. This disease has long interested bacteriologists on account 

 of certain analogies that it shows to human diphtheria. Although 

 the acute and rapid course of the disease in man differs from that 

 in fowls, where it is slow in evolution and chronic, it was formerly 

 believed that the relation between the two diseases was very close. 

 This supposed relation was formerly frequently used to explain 

 epidemics of human diphtheria as of avian origin. This hypothe- 

 sis, however, has not been borne out by the pathologist. 



The bacillus which causes human diphtheria is not met with in 

 these hens. Nor does antidiphtheritic serum, as Gratia and Lienaux 

 have shown, have any effect as a preventive or a cure in avian 

 diphtheria. The specific bacteria in these two diseases are cer- 

 tainly different. 



Many organisms have been described as causing the diphtheria 

 in hens and pigeons. It is to be noted, however, that none of these 

 organisms that have been mentioned produces the disease with its 

 slow, capricious, and irregular course, nor the lesions which dis- 

 appear in one place and reappear in another, and show a gravity 

 and duration that varies with the individual. Avian diphtheria 

 has not, in the majority of cases, the appearance of a disease which 

 tends to generalize and become a septicaemia. 



The technic that has been employed by many observers has 

 been of a nature designed to bring out organisms that cause sep- 

 ticaemias. Those who have studied it have frequently inoculated 

 healthy animals with false membranes. At times a generalized 

 infection was produced and an organism isolated at autopsy from 

 the heart's blood. The chances are, in such cases, that the organ- 



* Recherches sur la diphterie aviaire. Bulletin publie par la Soci^te" royale 

 des sciences medicales et naturelles de Bruxelles, June 3, 1907. 



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