LECTURE XXXIV. 

 HAEMORRHAGIC SEPTICAEMIA. 



This disease is interesting because of its many forms ; it is 

 interesting because medical treatment so far as we know is ab- 

 solutely useless and hopeless. We are helpless in the matter of 

 prevention because we have practically no information as to the 

 method of infection or method of spread. Those who have had 

 a chance to study outbreaks have been quite unable to trace any 

 connection between one outbreak and another, or to trace a pre- 

 vious history for any given outbreak. This disease is worthy of 

 very serious consideration because it is so wide spread and so 

 fatal. It appears sudden!}' and under all sorts of conditions ; a 

 number of animals, usually a large proportion, die, and the dis- 

 ease disappears as suddenly as it came. 



Etiology. — The specific cause of this disease is apparently a 

 germ Bacillus bovisepticus which has not been distinguished from 

 the bacillus of swine plague by any cultural or morphological 

 characteristics. How this microorganism spreads or how it gains 

 entrance into the animal body is not known, but at present it is 

 supposed that the entrance may be effected by inoculation ; through 

 the respiratory ; or the alimentary mucous membrane. 



History and development. — The onset is usually sudden and 

 unexpected, and yet in some outbreaks the onset is quite slow and 

 the cases are distinctly chronic. 



Season and climatic conditions apparently have nothing to 

 do with the prevalence, virulence or disappearance of this disease. 

 The mortality for the past few years during which it has been 

 studied has been high. 



Symptoms. — In the writer's experience the temperatures have 

 been uniformly normal or subnormal, except in certain cases where 

 the temperature rose rapidly just before death. 



The prominent symptoms in some outbreaks are those which 

 belong to a meningitis, but it would be misleading to suggest that 



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