9 



prolonged experimeuts upon pigs are required, that the time at our dis- 

 posal has been entirely inadequate ; and yet it was chiefly the hope of 

 making some substantial contribution towards the solution of this very 

 serious matter that induced the undersigned to accept at great personal 

 inconvenience the appointment tendered them. 



After the 1st of May the commissioners continued their work, but 

 without pay, desirous of obtaining additional facts before reporting. 



The Commission report only the results and definite conclusions de- 

 duced from the observations wliich they have been severally and col- 

 lectively able to make. Conforming more or less closely to the order 

 of the questions set forth in the letter of instructions above mentioned, 

 they are as follows : 



CONCLUSIONS. 



(1) It is the opinion of the Commission, based upon their own individ- 

 ual observations and examinations of the subject, that there are at least 

 two wide-spread epidemic diseases of hogs in this country which are 

 caused by different micro-organisms, but which have clinical history 

 and pathological lesions more or less similar, and very difficult to distin- 

 guish without the aid of a microscope and resort to bacteriological 

 methods; and that these two epidemic diseases have been fairly well 

 described in the recent annual reports of the Bureau of Animal Indus- 

 try, except it does not appear that "hog cholera" of these reports can 

 be said to have its special and exclusive seat in the digestive tract of 

 the animal as distinct from the lungs. So far as the knowledge and 

 observation of the Commission go, one of these epidemic diseases, viz., 

 that called by the Bureau authorities " swine plague," appears to be 

 far less prevalent than the other, which has been named by .them "hog 

 cholera." 



The Commission are further of the opinion that the disease called by 

 the authorities at Washington " hog cholera" is caused by the specific 

 action of a certain microbe named by them " the hog-cholera germ," 

 which has certain characteristics of form, size, movement, mode of 

 growth in artificial cultures, and action upon certain lower animals, and 

 taken together enable one to distinguish it from other microbes which 

 have been described from time to time by various authors as present in 

 swine disease; and that the descriptions of this microbe and its pecu- 

 liarities, as set forth in recent annual reports of the Bureau of Animal 

 Industry, are fairly accurate. 



The Commission are also of the opinion, although to a less positive 

 degree, that the epidemic disease called by the Bureau authorities 

 " swine plague '' has as its specific cause a certain microbe possessing 

 characteristics which have been fairly well described in recent annual 

 reports of the Bureau of Animal Industry, which distinguish it both 

 biologically and pathologically from the first-mentioned " germ of hog 

 cholera." 



(2) It is the opinion of the Commission that the actual and unde- 



