XI] BACILLI : SPECIFICALLY PATHOGENIC 223 



dryness) of the lung, and without ulceration of the intestine, 

 has been first recognised by Bollinger. Kitt has shown that 

 this affection is caused by a bacillus in many respects (mor- 

 phological and cultural) similar to that of fowl cholera, 

 rabbit septicaemia, and swine fever ; and Kitt and Hueppe 

 maintain, indeed, the identity of all these microbes ; but the 

 evidence to prove this is not sufficiently satisfactory. True, 

 rabbits inoculated with the microbes obtained from Davaine's 

 septicemia, fowl cholera, swine fever, or Wildseuche suc- 

 cumb under the symptoms of Davaine septicaemia ; it is like- 

 wise true that pigeons inoculated with cultures derived from 

 either of these diseases succumb to fowl cholera ; still a 

 great deal remains yet to prove the identity as regards the 

 action on swine of the bacteria of rabbit septicemia, fowl 

 cholera, and Wildseuche. To mention only one series of 

 difficulties. Fowls, as mentioned above, are highly suscep- 

 tible to the microbe of fowl cholera, but they are unsuscep- 

 tible to the microbes of swine fever or Wildseuche. Billings 

 (Texas fever, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1888) describes a species 

 of small motile bacilli closely related to the bacilli of swine 

 fever, alike as to morphology, cultural, and pathogenic 

 characters, as the cause of the cattle plague in Texas and 

 southern countries of the States. 



Loffler {Centralblatt f. Bakt. und Parasit., vol. xi., p. 134) 

 described a fatal epidemic amongst mice kept in the labora- 

 tory. From the enlarged spleen of the dead mice a motile 

 short bacillus was isolated, which evidently belongs to this 

 group of swine fever — Wildseuche bacilli. Its culture 

 proved very virulent on tame as well as wild mice, producing 

 on subcutaneous inoculation, as also on ingestion, acute 

 fatal septicaemia, the blood and the enlarged spleen par- 

 ticularly teeming with the microbe. On account of the 

 microbe bearing a certain cultural resemblance to the 



