320 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES. 



illness. Two months after the beginning of the experiments 

 tliey received in their food one litre of virulent culture in bouillon. 

 Two pigs which were not inoculated were subjected to the same 

 treatment. Within ten days these latter died with characteristic 

 intestinal lesions. The inoculated animals did not show any 

 important morbid phenomenon for two months ; after this lapse 

 two died. The autopsy showed intestinal lesions, which were 

 much developed, and had a chronic course, and very slight pul- 

 monary lesions. Both of the other inoculated animals resisted. 



These first experiments showed that the pig acquires immunity 

 with more difficulty than the subjects of other species. 



Swine plague, rougct de pore, angina, petechial or spotted 

 fever, red disease, erysipelas, &c., is common on the Continent of 

 Europe, and is, according to Continental writers, a specific septi- 

 caemia due to a fine bacillus resembling that of Koch's mouse 

 septicemia. If inoculated in the mouse, the animal invariably 

 dies ; it is also often fatal in the rabbit, guinea-pig, birds, and 

 the pig, but, according to Kitt, the field-mouse possesses im- 

 munity, as in septicemia, to the action of the microbe, and he 

 has also observed that its virulence is attenuated by once pass- 

 ing through the rabbit, and that after six days pigs may be 

 inocidated with blood exudate collected at the point of inocula- 

 tion, and tlius obtain immunity. The microbe exists externally 

 in different media, in damp earth, in water, and in plains and 

 valleys with slow flowing streams. Cornevin states that the 

 horse, ox and sheep, and guinea-pig are immune to its action, as 

 already stated ; it is a very fine cylindrical bacillus, measuring 

 from o-o-ffoTT to T-rr^-o ill length by -^^^stso i^^ breadth ; it is 

 found in the blood, particularly in the capillaries in contact 

 with their intima, in the white corpuscles, spleen, liver, kid- 

 neys, lymphatic glands, the bone marrow, exudates, feces, and 

 urine ; is non-motile, anaerobic, but grows in contact with air, 

 and in a temperature as low as 45° F. According to Kitt, it 

 resists putrefaction. Schottelius says that it develops spores ; 

 but this is denied by Cornevin and Kitt, who base their objec- 

 tions on the non-virulence of dried virus. 



This microbe, in reality the discovery of Loftier and Schutz, 

 although ascribed to Pasteur and Thuillier, is destroyed by slow 

 dessication in from fifty to eighty hours; by water at a tempera- 



