CEREBROSPINAL MENINGITIS (‘‘ FORAGE POISONING ’’). T 
colt fed experimentally upon some of the moldy corn, which was 
held responsible for the serious outbreak in Kansas in 1890, developed 
the disease and died on the twenty-sixth day. Again, the Kansas 
outbreak of 1906 was said by Haslam to have been produced by 
immature ears of corn infected by molds, although the exact mold 
was not discovered. By feeding horses upon this immature corn 
badly infected with molds, typical fatal cases of staggers were pro- 
duced in four out of seven horses. Haslam also records the fact 
that severe losses of horses have occurred in other States when the 
grasses in the pastures became moldy. Klimmer, commenting upon 
the negative results obtained in experiments with moldy feed, asserts 
that the numerous losses occurring from the feeding of such material 
indicates the probability that the experiments were not sufficiently 
extensive from which to draw conclusions, and believes that the use 
of such feed should be discouraged. Among other writers who have > 
attributed the disease to toxic fungi are Michener, Trumbower, and 
Harbaugh. The latter investigated the serious outbreak of this 
disease which occurred in Virginia and North Carolina in 1886, and 
claimed that every case of the disease could be traced directly to 
moldy feed. 
This theory of toxic fungi is not antagonistic to the facts In many 
of the best observed outbreaks, and knowing that fungi vary greatly 
in growth and in the elimination of various products under different 
climatic conditions, we may explain the irregularity of the symptoms 
as well as the occurrence of the disease under what may appear*to be 
identical conditions. Thus Ceni of Italy states that molds are capable 
of producing poisons, but only at certam stages of their growth, and 
at other times they are entirely inactive. A case of this character 
was investigated by this bureau several years ago in an’ outbreak 
among the United States Army horses at an encampment in Penn- 
sylvania. Many horses had died of cerebrospinal meningitis as a 
result of eating moldy baled hay, and as soon as the hay was elimi- 
nated the deaths ceased. Other horses in the vicinity not fed upon 
this hay failed to contract the disease. At the suggestion of State 
Vetermarian Marshall the bales were opened and exposed to the sun 
for three or four weeks, after which time this hay was fed sparingly 
at-first and later in usual quantities without producing any ill effect. 
Forage poisoning therefore seems to be an auto-intoxication rather 
than an infection, and due to certain chemical poisons or toxins 
formed by organismal activity. These toxins may be present when 
the forage is taken into the body or formed in the gastro-intestinal 
canal, and, therefore, the disease is a specific form of auto-intoxication. 
The nature of the substance which causes these harmful changes or 
the poisonous bodies that are formed remain unknown. 
