413 BACILLI WHICH PRODUCE SEPTICAEMIA 



diately after death ; later the number may be greatly increased as a 

 result of post-mortem multiplication within the vessels. The rabbit 

 is so extremely susceptible to infection by this bacillus that inocula- 

 tion in the cornea by a slight superficial wound usually gives rise to 

 general infection and death. This animal may also be infected by 

 the ingestion of food contaminated with a culture of the bacillus. It 

 is by this means that Pasteur proposed to destroy the rabbits in Aus- 

 tralia, which have multiplied in that country to such an extent as to 

 constitute a veritable pest. Both in fowls and in rabbits the disease 

 may under certain circumstances run a more protracted course e-(J-, 

 when they are inoculated with a small quantity of an attenuated cul- 

 ture. In less susceptible animals guinea-pigs, sheep, dogs, horses 



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FIG. 133. Bacillus of Schweineseuche, in blood of rabbit. (Schutz.) 



a local abscess, without general infection, may result from the sub- 

 cutaneous injection of the bacillus ; but these animals are not entirely 

 immune. In the infectious maladies of swine, cattle, deer, and other 

 large animals to which reference has been made, and which are be- 

 lieved to be due to the same bacillus, the symptoms and pathological 

 appearances do not entirely correspond with those in the rabbit or 

 the fowl; but the bacillus as obtained from the blood of such animals 

 corresponds in its morphological and biological characters with Pas- 

 teur's microbe of fowl cholera and Koch's bacillus of rabbit septi- 

 caemia, and pure cultures from the various sources mentioned are 

 equally fatal to rabbits and to fowls. In the larger animals pul- 

 monary and intestinal lesions are developed, and in swine a diffused 

 red color of the skin, similar to that observed in the disease known 

 in Germany as Schweinerothlauf (Fr. rouget), is sometimes seen. 



