Gastro- Enteritis in Calves. 151 



In the deadly outbreak in Ireland, Nocard found in the blood 

 and lesions of the most acute and fatal cases, a bacterium of the 

 colon group, showing the characters of those causing hsemorrhagic 

 septicaemia and classed as pasteurellas by Trevisan. It was small, 

 nonmotile, ovoid, taking a polar aniline stain, bleaching in Gram's 

 solution, and failing to liquefy gelatine, or form indol, or grow 

 on potato. This organism was formed usually in pure culture, 

 in the blood and lesions of the most acute cases in their early 

 stages. In milder cases and in advanced stages it was often un- 

 detectable or absent. This is explained by I^ignieres on the 

 ■ hypothesis that its early presence debilitated the tissues and laid 

 them open to the attacks of the more common bacteria of white 

 scour, which being more prolific and hardy crowded out and elim- 

 inated the septicaemia bacterium, but themselves carried on the 

 disease to a speedily fatal issue. 



In his earlier cases Nocard found these common bacteria only 

 in complex cultures, but later he detected the pasteurella (cocco- 

 bacillus) in impure culture in a diseased femoro-tibial joint of one 

 of the subjects, and growing this cocco-bacillus in pure cultures, 

 he found them to be very virulently infective. 



A few drops, injected into the peritoneum of a Guinea pig, or 

 veins of a rabbit, killed in six to eighteen hours with the lesions 

 of Septicaemia haemorrhagica which characterize the most acute 

 cases of white scour. The blood and viscera swarmed, with the 

 microbe. 



A calf one day old received in the jugular 3 cc. of the culture, 

 had hyperthermia in six hours and in twenty hours lay with 

 sunken eye, retracted abdomen, a temperature of 95 ° F., and a 

 profuse, yellowish, foetid, faecal discharge. Death took place 

 30.5 hours after the injection and all the lesions of acute white 

 scour were met with. 



A second calf four weeks old, which had already suffered from 

 white scour and recovered had an injection into the jugular of 

 10 cc. of the same culture. In six hours it suffered a slight rise 

 of temperature, was dull and breathed short, but in twenty hours 

 he was completely recovered, full of life and appetite. 



In other casual and experimental cases, Nocard found that, 

 when death occurred within one or two days after birth, the 

 symptoms and lesions were mainly those of hasmorrhagic septi- 



