SEPTICEMIA OF NEW-BORN ANIMALS. 407 



become greyish or blackish and very foetid. The hair of the tail, 

 quarters and hocks is soiled and matted, the skin irritable and reddish ; 

 the patients lose strength, appear unsteady on their limbs, and develop 

 rapid respiration and tumultuous action of the heart. . 



They take little food, become weaker by degrees, and die in a con- 

 dition of exhaustion. 



Fever, well marked at first, frequently diminishes, and the tempera- 

 ture may remain normal for several days, falling to 97° Fahr., or even 

 95° Fahr., twenty-four hours before death. 



This is the commonest form of the disease. It lasts three to five 

 days, and is always grave. 



Cattle-men recognise the disease chiefly by the diarrhoea and loss of 

 appetite. 



I^astly, a third and rarer form occurs during which appetite is main- 

 tained in spite of the diarrhoea. The animals remain thin, develop 

 poorly, but survive for a month, six weeks or two months. The diarrhoea 

 diminishes or disappears, but its disappearance is followed by complica- 

 tions such as broncho-})neumonia, pleuro-pneumonia, endocarditis, acute 

 arthritis, etc., a fact which led Prof. Galtier to give the disease the name 

 of " septic pleuro-pneumonia in calves." These complications, again, are 

 extremely grave, and generally prove fatal after a period of varying 

 length. They are due to local development of micro-organisms of the 

 kind which produce septicaemia, and similar to those described under the 

 name of broncho-pneumonia of intestinal origin in sucking calves. 



They differ, however, as regards their cause, from the primary affec- 

 tion, and may be due to very varied organisms, the commonest being 

 those of suppuration. These organisms, in fact, are alien to the primary 

 disease, and obtain entrance from without, very probably by the tracheo- 

 bronchial tract. 



In young pigs septicpemia assumes the same forms as in the calf. 

 In lambs the chronic form seems more frequent than the peracute 

 and the ordinary forms. 



Causation. The septicaemia of calves, and possibly of all new-born 

 animals, of whatever species, is produced by a microbe which flourishes 

 in the manure and litter of stables, and which Nocard included in the 

 group of Pasteurella. It can be found in the blood from the moment the 

 flrst external symptoms appear until the time of death. During the last 

 hours, however, the bacterium Coli communis also invades the circulation 

 in many instances, and if cultures are not made until some hours after 

 death, the colon bacillus and bacteria of putrefaction aie more particu- 

 larly discovered. 



The microbe of calf septicaemia can be readily cultivated in jelly or in 

 ordinary liquid media. Injected into the veins of experimental animals, 



