56 Veterinary Medicine. 



even lung plague. Metax^, in 1816 in Italy, manifestly describes 

 it. Oreste and Aruianni, in 1882 and 1887, traced Italian cases 

 to the microbe. In 1854 it destroyed many cattle and deer in 

 England (Veterinarian). In 1878 Bollinger records its great 

 fatality among the deer, wild boars, cattle and horses in and near 

 the royal parks at Munich, and for a number of years after in 

 Bavaria. Friedberger records its presence in Schliichtern, Prus- 

 sia, in 1885-6, Condamine in Cochin China in 1868, and Guill. 

 beau and Hess in Switzerland in 1894. In America, what appears 

 to be the same affection is noted as coru-fodder disease in Nebras- 

 ka (Billings"), as Wildseuche in Tennessee (Norgaard), and as 

 hsemorrhagica septicaemia in Minnesota (Reynolds). I have 

 repeatedly met with the affection in New York in cows arriving 

 from the west, and in the indigenous cattle on wet, mucky, un- 

 drained land in spring, about the period of the melting snows. 



Bacteriology. The essential cause of the disease is a saprophy- 

 tic cocco-bacillus, ovoid, with rounded ends, about i/i. long by 

 0.3 to 0.6/i broad, but showing involution forms and a variable 

 size. It is non-motile (Kitt claims motility), aerobic (facultative 

 anaerobic), takes a polar stain with clear centre in aniline colors, 

 bleaches in Gram's (i) solution, shows neither spores nor flagella, 

 grows readily in bouillon, on gelatine, (a bluish transparent layer 

 without liquefying), serum at 98° F., milk (without acidifying or 

 coagulating), and alkaline potato (not on the acid). The cultures 

 have a peculiar odor and yield no indol. 



The microbe shows a very close relationship with those of 

 swine plague, chicken cholera and rabbit septicaemia, but it some- 

 times differs in showing little or no pathogenesis for the Guinea-pig. 



Animals susceptible. It is pathogenic to deer, buffalo, cattle, 

 horses, swine, rabbits, rats, mice, and to a lesser extent to goats 

 and sheep. 



The pathogenesis varies with the immediate source of the 

 microbe. When obtained from cattle a drop of blood kills rabbits 

 in twelve to twenty hours, with intense haemorrhagic laryngitis 

 and tracheitis. Guinea-pigs die in forty to eighty hours. When 

 obtained from the buffalo it killed horse, ox, or pig in twenty to 

 forty-eight hours. That obtained from barbone (buffalo) appears 

 to be more potent than that from septicaemia haemorrhagica 

 (cattle). 



