BIOLOGICAL THERAPEUTICS 543 



soiling (cerebro-spinal meningitis), known also as "corn stalk disease", 

 may be at times mistaken for hemorrhagic septicemia. The fact is, how- 

 ever, that this disease manifests hemorrhages in different parts of the 

 body, whereas in forage poisoning the only lesions present are infection 

 of the meninges of the central nervous system (often slight) and in the 

 less occult cases an extra amount of fluid in the brain and spinal canal. 



TREATMENT. 



Medicinal treatment is absolutely useless in acute cases. More re- 

 cently the administration of liberal doses of serum has been shown to 

 favorably affect the protracted cases and a considerable proportion of 

 such animals have been saved by administration of anti-hemorrhagic septi- 

 cemia serum. The injections should be made intravenously, and not less 

 than 50 to 100 mils of the serum should be given as the initial dose, to 

 be repeated in from eighteen to twenty-four hours if the severity of the 

 symptoms demands it. 



All affected animals should be immediately isolated. The carcasses 

 should be burned, or buried, and the premises thoroughly disinfected. In 

 fact, all precautionary measures recommended for anthrax should be fol- 

 lowed. The disease being fatal in character, attention must be directed 

 to preventing and checking all outbreaks. For this purpose vaccination 

 has been employed with uniformly good results. Although one of the 

 newer biologic products, hemorrhagic septicemia bacterin is one of the 

 most dependable, satisfactory, inexpensive and important of all such 

 products. 



The first time vaccination was resorted to in the United States was 

 in an outbreak of hemorrhagic septicemia which occurred among the buf- 

 falo in the Yellowstone National Park in 1911. The method of prepara- 

 tion of the bacterin used in that instance has been described by Mohler 

 and Eichhorn in an article on "Vaccination Against Hemorrhagic Septi- 

 cemia" in 1911. Since that time this method has been employed on 

 hundreds of thousands of animals throughout the United States and the 

 results justify the use of the bacterin for preventive purposes. 



In severe outbreaks it is advisable to treat the animals with protec- 

 tive doses of serum alone in order to prevent further losses. Since such 

 treatment produces only a passive immunity it should be followed in two 

 or three weeks with the injection of bacterin in order to develop an active 

 immunity. 



In a recent publication, by the Bureau of Animal Industry, on hemor- 

 rhagic septicemia it is stated that cattle, sheep, swine, rabbits and fowls 

 if treated with heated cultures of hemorrhagic septicemia organisms ob- 

 tained from animals of the same species will almost invariably be pro- 

 tected against injections of living cultures of the same germ, even though 

 applied in comparatively large quantities. 



Hemorrhagic Septicemia in Sheep. 

 This disease in sheep is characterized by a septicemic condition asso- 

 ciated with a discharge from the eyes, nose, and a pleuropneumonia. 

 The cause is the B. ovisepticus. 



The infection occurs usually through the digestive tract from infected 

 food or drinking water. Young sheep are far more susceptible than older 

 animals. 



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