No. 4.] REPORT OF (^ATTLE BUREAU. 295 



ing from rabies or not at the time of death became very 

 desirable. Various scientists for some years have been con- 

 ducting investigations witli tliis object in view, witli some 

 degree of success ; but it was not until 1903 that a certain 

 means of diagnosis was discovered, when Negri, an Italian 

 pathologist at the University of Pavia, discovered small 

 bodies in the nerve cells in certain parts of the brain, and 

 some of the ganglia of nerve cells outside the brain, known 

 as the Gasserian ganglia, which had not previously been 

 observed ; these little bodies have been named, in honor of 

 their discoverer, Negri bodies. They are constant in well- 

 developed cases of rabies in all animals, and are not found 

 under any other conditions. This method of diagnosis has 

 been adopted by Dr. Langdon Frothingham in doing this 

 work for the Cattle Bureau, and it is now possible in a well- 

 developed case of rabies to make a positive diagnosis in a 

 few hours, instead of waiting nearly two weeks, which was 

 recjuired under the method of intracranial inoculation of 

 small experimental animals, provided the dog's head is re- 

 ceived at the lal)oratory in a fresh condition, with the brain 

 intact. In a few instances Avhere an animal has been killed 

 when just comm-encing to show symptoms of the disease, 

 the microscopic examination has not been satisfactory, and 

 inoculation methods have been necessary. 



Fifty-three dogs' heads (in some instances the entire dog), 

 1 cat, and the brains of 1 cow and 2 calves have been 

 received at the bacteriological laboratory of the Harvard 

 Medical School for examination. Of these, 35 dogs were 

 found to have been rabid, 13 were negative cases, and 5 dogs' 

 heads were too mutilated and decomposed to be of any value 

 for examination ; the cat proved to be a negative case ; 1 

 cow and 1 calf w^ere positive, and the examination of the 

 other calf's brain proved unsatisfactory. 



The laboratory work, and the necessity of employing one 

 agent nearly all the time on field work, and at times two 

 agents, has occasioned a considerable expense to the State ; 

 but it is hoped that the necessity for dealing with the out- 

 break, and the results achieved, have more than justified 

 this. 



