AVIAN TUBERCULOSIS 183 
fowls are weak, dumpish and move about very little. The eyes are 
bright in most cases until the end is near. The appetite is good, and 
the fowls eat ravenously until a few days before death. The tempera- 
ture is in most cases within the normal limits, rarely it is subnormal. 
The blood is pale. The hemoglobin varies from thirty-five to seventy 
per cent. as tested with Gowers’ hemoglobinometer. The red blood 
corpuscles vary from 1,010,000 to 2,600,000 per cubic millimeter. 
There appears to be a slight increase in the number of white corpuscles 
especially of the eosinophiles. 
— Tuberculous fowls are often 
lame. Pernot mentions this 
as one of the important symp- 
toms in the cases he observed. 
It is due to joint lesions in 
some cases. In others it ap- 
pears to be due to extensive 
lesions in the viscera. 
| 
| 
The avian variety of tubercle 
bacteria resembles quite closely 
those of the human and bovine 
varieties in size and general 
| morphology as they are found 
| in the tissues of the fowl. A 
: measurement of over two hun- 
dred individual organisms in 
cover glass preparations made 
‘ ie i -/.| directly from organs of fowls 
A PHOTOGRAPH OF A TUBERCU- gave the following: In the liver 
Pe eee the length varied from 1.2 to 
3.5¥.1n the spleen and in the skin they varied from 1 to 4 in length. 
A general average gave a length of 2.74. They often appear in 
these preparations in dense masses. Chains made up of a number 
of short elements are rarely present. Granules are occasionally 
observed. In the preparations from the skin a considerable num- 
ber of them contain polar granules and not infrequently ‘three 
such bodies were noticed in a single individual. Perhaps the most 
striking feature concerning these organisms in the tissues is their 
enormous numbers. Sibley has called attention to the similarity of 
avian tubercle bacteria to those of leprosy in that they multiply to 
