CEREBROSPINAL MENINGITIS ('' FORAGE POISONING"). 5 



is also reported to have been found by Christiana in primary sporadic 

 meningitis in the horse and in a goat. 



The remarkable part of all the above investigations is that each 

 author considers his particular organism as the etiological factor of 

 the disease, and the majority of these writers believe they have suc- 

 ceeded in producing the disease in horses by the inoculation of these 

 differing agents. Some of these positive results are readily explained 

 by the large quantity of turbid fluid injected under the dura. The 

 inoculation of 5 and 10 c. c. doses of a heavy emulsion of any organism 

 is likely to produce an irritation, and the inflammation set up by 

 such foreign material will necessarily produce exudation with ac- 

 companying mechanical pressure, so that it is not surprising to read 

 in the post-mortem notes of some of these cases that the meninges 

 bulged through the opening on cutting through the bones of the skull. 



Schmidt, of Dresden, is of the opinion that the nature of the infec- 

 tious principle is not settled, and beheves that the cocci and dip- 

 lococci which have been described as causative factors will in future 

 be deprived of their pathogenic relationship. 



In two outbreaks of forage poisoning investigated by Moore, of 

 Cornell, one gave negative results from a bacteriological standpoint, 

 while in the other pure cultures of the colon bacillus were obtained 

 from the brain. 



Grimm, working in Z wick's laboratory in Berlm, isolated strepto- 

 cocci from horses affected with head disease or staggers, which were 

 not essentially different from the Borna streptococci of Ostertag. 

 Owing to the regularity mth which these cocci were taken from the 

 brains of horses with ''head disease" — cocci which Grimm stated 

 possessed sUght, if any, properties necessary to make them causal 

 factors of disease — the question arose whether the same microorgan- 

 isms are not also found in the brains of healthy horses. Grimm ob- 

 tained the heads of 10 horses which were killed at the Zoological 

 Garden for the animals, and which were by examination found to be 

 free from any indication of cerebrospinal meningitis. In the brains 

 of these healthy horses he found cocci (staphylococci and strepto- 

 cocci), although cultures were made within a few hours after death, 

 and at least one strain has shown many similarities to the streptococcus 

 found by Ostertag. 



These results of Grimm's work are very similar to the results of the 

 Bureau of Animal Industry. In horses which have died of forage 

 poisoning it is not a difficult task to recover various forms of cocci; in 

 fact, too many forms to make them all of etiological significance, while 

 in those cases which have been kiUed in the late stages of the disease 

 it is of common occurrence to have all the culture media inoculated 

 with the various tissues remain sterile. On the other hand, we found 

 micrococci, diplococci, streptococci, and staphylococci so frequently 



