INFECTIOUS ABORTION IN CATTLE 199 
Campbell; and more recently by another committee headed by Sir 
John M’Fadyean; in Denmark, by Bang and Stribolt; by the U. S. 
Bureau of Animal Industry; by the New York State Veterinary 
College; and by a number of the State Experiment Stations. 
Geographical distribution. This affection exists with more or less 
constancy in all countries where cattle raising is an industry. It 
seems to be world wide. 
Etiology. A considerable number of bacteria have been found to be 
associated with abortion. Bang and Stribolt found an anerobic 
bacterium which they believed to be the specific cause of the disease. 
They found it in a number of cases and reported positive results from 
inoculation experiments. Its cultivation required a medium com- 
posed of agar, gelatin and blood serum. Bang considered this bacillus 
to be a pathogenic organism which has no saprophytic existence. The 
fact that when he injected it into the blood stream it seemed to grow 
only in the pregnant uterus and in the fetus was considered evidence 
of this. The fact seems to be clearly established that the specific 
cause is the organism isolated by Bang and Stribolt. Its morphology 
and cultural characters as well as the technique for its cultivation 
have been carefully studied by Bang and Stribolt, M’Fadvean and 
Stockman, MacNeal and Kerr, Nowak, Zwick and Wedemann, 
Holth, Fabyan, Schroeder, Cotton, Mohler and Traum and others. 
While slight differences appear in the descriptions of the organism, 
they are not greater than might be expected, or than actually exist 
with different varieties of many species of bacteria. The organism 
can be cultivated on a number of media, such as the agar-gelatin- 
serum of Bang and Stribolt, and on potato, glycerin agar and certain 
liquid media, such as glycerin-broth-serum, glycerin bouillon, milk 
and others. It has been shown that this organism can be cultivated 
in a variety of artificial media, that it is not an obligatory anzrobe and 
that after a few generations it can usually be cultivated under zrobic 
conditions. Its cultural characters seem to be quite constant when 
it becomes adapted to artificial media. 
Its natural distribution or habitat has not been fully determined. 
As it is a pathogenic organism the question is whether or not it exists 
in nature outside of the infected animals. The observations, as 
recorded in the literature, indicate that it is able to live for a con- 
siderable length of time on litter or other articles contaminated with 
it. Thus far is does not seem to have been isolated from any source 
