292 MISCELLANEOUS INFECTIONS 



excitable. The gait was irregular. Convulsions set in prior 

 to death. 



The duration of the disease varied from two days to several 

 weeks. 



The morbid anatomy varied. In the acute cases the 

 anatomical changes were verj^ slight. The most noticeable 

 and characteristic lesion observed consisted of petechial hem- 

 orrhages under the endocardium. These were present in every 

 case. There w^ere occasional blood extravasations in the 

 intestinal mucosa. There was marked injection of the blood 

 vessels of the meninges and blood tinted fluid in the cavity. 

 The chronic cases presented a wider range of lesions in the 

 organs. 



Cultures of the bacillus were obtained from the different 

 organs. The bacilli were found in small numbers in cover- 

 glass preparations made from the organs. The organism was 

 fatal to experimental animals and to calves. It was more 

 virulent than the bacillus of hog cholera obtained from hogs 

 dead of that disease. 



Since Gaertner first discovered this organism in 1888 in 

 the meat of a diseased cow, it has been isolated by others from 

 both animals and man. It has been found to produce toxic 

 properties that are pathogenic for animals, and several people 

 have been reported to have become ill from eating broth made 

 from meat containing this organism. During the last few 

 years several bacilli differing slightly from Gaertner' s bacillus 

 have been isolated from cases of meat poisoning. 



Bacilli of this group, or at least of closely related groups, 

 have frequently been found to stand in a causal relation to the 

 lesions with which they were associated. The more import- 

 ant of these are Bacillus typhi mtiriiim obtained by Loeffler in 

 1890 from an enzootic among mice, the bacillus isolated by 

 Mereshkowsky in 1895 from the ground .squirrel, and Bacillus 

 psittacosis isolated by Nocard in 1893 from the organs of 

 parrots. 



In addition to these, other bacilli have been found appar- 

 ently as the etiological factor in isolated cases among animals. 



