322 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES. 



Infectious pneumonia — swine plague of American writers — 

 is manifested by accelerated breathing, pulmonary gangrene, and 

 caseous tumours, induced by an ovoid non-motile bacterium 

 similar to that of the septicaemia of the rabbit and the bacillus 

 of chicken cholera, measuring about o-o^q-o^ of an inch in length 

 and about -50-^0-0 ^^ breadth, proving fatal, when inoculated, to 

 the pig in from twenty-four to forty-eight hours. It induces an 

 inflammatory oedema at the point of puncture, and proving 

 fatal in sixty hours in a pig which had been given imnmnity 

 against swine plague by inoculation. According to Schutz, the 

 contagium is very subtle and induces the disease by inhalation 

 by the skin and digestive apparatus, is rapidly fatal, and is 

 marked by redness, tumefaction of the skin in the regions of 

 the neck and legs ; with cough, difficulty of breathing, intense 

 fever, and great depression. 



The post mortem appearances are those of pneumonia, with 

 several reddish grey hepatised spots, having yellowish necrosed 

 spots in their centres of the size of a grain of sand, and associ- 

 ated with pleuritis and fibrinous pericarditis. The bronchial 

 glands are enlarged, the liver, kidneys, spleen, and heart are 

 softened and degenerate, but the lymphatics of the intestine are 

 not usually altered ; and in some chronic cases of the lungs, 

 lymphatic glands, tonsils, bones and tendons, caseous tumours, 

 resembling those of tuberculosis — but not containing the 

 tubercle bacillus — are discovered. 



The disease can be inoculated into the rabbit, mouse, guinea- 

 pig, fowls, and pigeons, but large doses are required to induce 

 fatal results in the three latter. It is mostly transmitted from 

 one pig to another by inhalation. 



