‘ETIOLOGY 21 
the filtered liquid. It would, nevertheless, be interest- 
ing to know whether (as Dr. Copeman remarked to 
me) any British bacteriologist has confirmed Carré’s 
work. 
In his paper, included in the Transactions of the Tenth 
International Veterinary Congress, London, Carré made 
the statement that he observed seven dogs and was 
unable to find the B. bronchisepticus. He may have 
examined the dogs in the later stages of the disease, 
when the organism in question is overrun with secondary 
invaders, and is not so often found. Ferry’s, M‘Gowan’s, 
and Torrey’s conclusions were drawn as the result of 
examining several hundred dogs, to say nothing of all 
the other laboratory animals infected with the bacillus 
worked on during the past thirteen years; and after 
reading their articles and accounts of the technique 
employed, one cannot but appreciate the extreme pre- 
- cautions taken to exclude all outside sources of infection, 
and the important point that their work was carried 
on independently, neither knowing that the other was 
working on the disease. This must mean something to 
one who is open-minded and looking for facts. 
Arguments against Ferry’s Organism and Replies 
Thereto.—Several arguments have from time to time 
been advanced against the probability of Ferry’s organ- 
ism being the specific cause of distemper: (1) That it is 
a saprophyte normally inhabiting the respiratory tract 
of healthy dogs ; (2) can only be regarded as a secondary 
invader, merely setting up a broéncho-pneumonia under 
favourable circumstances ; and (3) that it is not respon- 
sible for all the typical symptoms of true distemper. 
Broncho-pneumonia itself is obviously not necessarily 
distemper, and may be regarded only as a secondary 
symptom of that disease, and the inference remains that 
an invisible virus is the primary invader, which, having 
