Infective Gastro-enterits, etc. 645 



very evident good result. McEachran suggested the feeding of 

 oil cake and other albuminoid and oleaginous food to counteract 

 the alleged malnutrition, but Johnston's cases in over fed animals 

 show that something more is demanded. Another suggestion 

 has been made to the effect that cattle should be exterminated in 

 the affected counties to remove the material necessary for the 

 maintenance of the poison. But, if the poison is produced by a 

 crj'ptogam growing on the vegetation, as seems not improbable, 

 it would be likely to extend all the same in the absence of cattle. 

 In such a case the true course is to study the nature of the organ- 

 ism, and the phanerogam on which it grows, when it might become 

 possible either to exterminate the flowering plant which acts as a 

 host for the offending organism, or to spray it with an effective 

 fungicide ahd thus reach the object in another way. 



INFECTIVE GASTRO-ENTERITIS AND PNEUMONIA 

 IN THE NEW BORN ; WHITE SCOUR. 



In treating of this disease in Vol. II, page 141-2, the work of 

 Jensen, Perroncito and Nikolski is quoted, with the remark that 

 " it is premature to specify any particular microbe as the sole cause 

 of the affection." Since the publication of that volume, Nocard, 

 investigating in Ireland a very prevalent and fatal affection of 

 new born calves, which proved fatal by "white scour" a few 

 days after birth, or by pneumonia one or two weeks later, identi- 

 fied as the pathogenic agent a small, nonmotile, ovoid bacterium, 

 taking the polar aniline stain, bleaching in Gram's solution, fail- 

 ing to liquefy gelatine, or to form indol or to grow on potato. 

 In other words it shows the general characters of the colon group 

 of bacteria, causative of hseraorrhagic septicaemia, and classed as 

 pasteurellas by Trevisan and lyignieres. This is not found in 

 blood and lesions in all subjects, but is usually present in pure 

 culture in the most acute, fatal cases. Its occasional absence later 

 in the disease is explained, according to I^ignieres, by the power 

 possessed by these germs of robbing the healthy tissues of their 

 power of resistance and laying them open to the atacks of other 

 microorganisms which are usually present in abundance, but are 

 harmless to the healthy tissues in the absence of the Pasteurella. 



