74 Veterinary Medicine. 



even lung plague. Metaxa, in 1816 in Italy, manifestly describes 

 it. Oreste and Armanni, 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. In 1885 Kitt saw a wide-spread epizootic in Simbach. 

 Friedberger records its presence in Schliichtern, Prussia, in 

 1885-6, Cohdamine in Cochin China in 1868, and Guillbeau and 

 Hess in Switzerland in 1894. In 1898 Pease recorded its preva- 

 lence in buffalo and cattle in Hindustan. In America, what ap' 

 pears to be the same affection is noted as corn-fodder disease in 

 Nebraska (Billings), as Wildseuche in Tennessee (Norgaard), 

 and as hsemorrhagica septicaemia in Minnesota (Wilson and 

 Brimhall, Reynolds) . I have repeatedly met with the aflfection 

 in New York in cows arriving from the west, and in the indi- 

 genous cattle on wet, mucky, undrained land in spring, about 

 the period of the melting snows. 



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

 tic cocco-bacillus, (B. Bovisepticus), ovoid, with rounded ends, 

 about I jn long by 0.3 to 0.6 /a 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 98.6° 

 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 pathogensis 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 pathogensis 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 



