32 CANINE DISTEMPER 
fluid, well spread over the surface of the agar, resulted in 
the appearance of half a dozen isolated colonies of a pure 
culture of his bacillus. He never succeeded in obtaining 
cultures from the blood. 
In a recent interview with Dr. Copeman, he explained 
to me that, although in his original paper read before the 
Royal Society in December, 1900, he stated, ‘If gelatin 
be inoculated, growth occurs slowly at room temperature, 
and after a time the medium tends to become liquefied,” 
he was, in fact, misled by the great heat of that summer, 
and that subsequent observations proved that gelatin 
was not liquefied. . 
Ligniéres and Phisalix (1900-1901) found a long bacillus 
which they concluded was Pasteurella canina (an organism 
similar to B. avisepticus), cultures of which, when inocu- 
lated into susceptible dogs, produced typical clinical 
signs of distemper—eg., catarrh of the nasal and 
conjunctival mucous membranes, broncho-pneumonia, 
pustules, gastro-enteritis, corneal ulceration, chorea, 
paralysis, ete.—the malignity of the attack being modified 
according to the dose. The organism was a Gram- 
negative, non-motile one, which assumed a cocco-bacillary 
form in guinea-pigs, and both authorities testified to its 
presence in the heart's blood of dogs in acute distemper, 
though they were unable to isolate it in nasal and other 
discharges. Phisalix has often found the Paséeurella in 
very long filamentous forms, which have all the cultural, 
staining, and virulent characters of typical Pasteurella, 
though they become gradually attenuated after several 
sub-cultivations, and with age. Passage through the 
dog, however, restored their former virulence. Phisalix 
prepared from its cultures an immunising vaccine, which 
he and Ligniéres declared gave protection against dis- 
temper. Copeman tested it and found that it was in many 
cases ineffectual against infective matter prepared from 
