TUBERCULOSIS. 401 



The author has examined several cases of so-called spontaneous 

 tuberculosis in fowls. Sections of the liver were in one case remark- 

 able on account of the extraordinary invasion of the caseous deposits 

 with bacilli. Cover-glass preparations had been made from the 

 liver in the following way for diagnostic purposes : A tubercle was 

 readily picked out on the point of a scalpel and .crushed between two 

 slides, and the cover-glass preparations stained with the Ziehl- 

 IsTeelsen solution. The bacilli are for the most part very small. A 

 few attain a considerable length, but the majority are in the form 

 of small, straight rods, with many sizes intervening between these 

 rods and isolated granules. 



In July 1888 the author received from Mr. Bland Sutton the 

 liver and lungs of a Rhea, which had died in the Zoological Gardens. 

 The lung was infiltrated with caseous deposits, and there were 

 scattered caseous nodules in the liver varying in size from a pea 

 to a marble. The naked-eye appearance of a section of the liver 

 through these nodules, at once recalled to mind the naked-eye 

 appearance of the deposits in the pig's liver already described. But 

 whereas in microscopical preparations of the pig's liver, bacilli were 

 very scantilj' present, the sections of the lung and liver of the Rhea 

 contained bacilli in such extraordinary numbers that, under a power 

 of fifty diameters, the collections of bacilli could be recognised as red 

 granular masses. These red masses under a high power were re- 

 solved into dense colonies of bacilli. In their number and their 

 distribution in the tissues, in their varying si^e, and in the extra- 

 ordinary length of the longest forms, they presented very interesting 

 points for observation. From the naked-eye appearance of the 

 disease and the general microscopical characters, as well as the 

 presence of bacilli agreeing in their staining reactions with the 

 classical tubercle bacilh, the author had no hesitation in pronouncing 

 the disease to be avian tuberculosis. 



Klein, who had examined a similar case, alluded to it in a 

 description of leprosy; but this disease is unknown in the lower 

 animals, and all attempts to infect them from man have been 

 almost, if not entirely, negative. 



The bacilh in the Rhea are principally collected in the caseous 

 parts, but they are also found in the tissue generally, and often 

 collected in large cells. In size they vary to a marked extent. In 

 the cells they often form compact masses of short bacilli, but in 

 other parts, both in collections and singly, they attain a greater 

 length than is observed in any other form of tuberculosis. Some of 

 the bacilli present a very interesting appearance. They are provided 



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