FILTRATION EXPERIMENTS WITH VIRUS OF 

 CATTLE PLAGUE. 



By E. H. Ruediger. 



(From the Serum Section of the Biological Laboratory, Bureau of Science. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The question as to whether the virulent factor of the blood of animals 

 sick with cattle plague will or will not pass the Berkefeld or Chamberland 

 filter is still an open one, and therefore a legitimate subject for inves- 

 tigation. The following brief review of the literature will make this 

 conclusion clear: 



Semmer, in the year 1895 * reported that the contagium of cattle plague does 

 not pass through the Chamberland filter. No mention is made in the reference 

 whether he used filter F or filter B. Nencki, Sieber and Wyznikiewicz 2 found 

 that extracts made from the organs of an animal suffering from cattle plague 

 transmitted the disease when injected under the skin of nonimmune animals. 

 After having been filtered through either the Berkefeld or the Chamberland 

 candles these extracts were entirely harmless. Kolle and Turner a state that 

 cattle-plague blood or bile are rendered nonvirulent on being passed through 

 either the Berkefeld or the Chamberland filter. In order to exclude the pos- 

 sibility of an intracorpuscular microbe which might not be free in the blood, 

 they dissolved the red blood corpuscles by mixing defibrinated blood with 0.2 

 per cent solution of sodium chloride. Inoculation experiments with filtrates 

 of laked blood gave identical results. 



Nicolle and Adil-Bey ' found that the virus of cattle plague does not pass 

 through the Berkefeld nor through the Chamberland filter, one part of defib- 

 rinated blood having been mixed with nine parts of water. In a later report '• 

 these authors state if peritoneal fluid is used for experimental work the fil- 

 trates from the Berkefeld and from the Chamberland filters are frequently 

 infectious. Yersin, 8 on repeating the experiments of Nicolle and Adil-Bey veri- 

 fied their results. He injected physiological salt solution into the peritoneal 

 cavity of an animal sick with cattle plague; four hours later he collected the 

 peritoneal fluid, filtered it and with the filtrate inoculated nonimmune cattle. 



1 Deutsche Zeitschr. f Thiermedicin (1S95), 22, 37. 



■-Centrbl. f. Bakteriol. Orig. (1898) 23, 535. 



'Ztschr. f. Hyg. u. Infelctionskranlch. Leipzig (1898), 29, 301. 



4 Ann. d. I'inst. Pasteur (1899), 13, 323. 



'Ibid. (1902), 16, 50. 



"Ibid. (1904), 18, 429. 



105 



