4 BULLETIN 674, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
The bipolar staining property of the organism may be demon- 
strated readily in preparations made from the tissues or body fluids 
(kidneys, blood, ete.), cultures of the organism usually giving less 
pronounced results in this respect. 
Attempts have been made during an outbreak of hemorrhagic 
septicemia among cattle to transfer the disease from affected to 
healthy animals by means of rubbing saliva from diseased cattle into 
the mouths of healthy susceptible animals, and by injecting serum 
from the blood of a diseased yearling beneath the skin of susceptible 
young cattle, but without success. Many attempts to infect hogs by 
natural means from diseased cattle also have failed. In one in- 
stance, however. a colt that fed from the rack with a number of 
diseased sheep contracted the disease and died. 
The spread of the disease seems to depend nearly as much upon 
the condition and susceptibility of the animal as upon the contagious 
nature of the disease, as thin, poorly nourished young stock most 
frequently become infected and die of septicemia. 
In a number of outbreaks of a disease resembling hemorrhagic 
septicemia in all its manifestations and anatomical changes an or- 
ganism which differs in cultural characteristics from the true B. bi- 
polaris septicus has been recovered. This organism proves to be 
virulent for experimental animals (rabbits and guinea pigs), pro- 
ducing in them changes suggestive of hemorrhagic septicemia. In 
preparations from affected tissue or body fluids the organism stains 
bipolar, and usually occurs singly or occasionally in pairs. It differs 
from the true B. bipolaris septicus in that it appears slightly larger, 
possesses a sluggish motility, and produces gas in sugar media. In 
its cultural characteristics it corresponds in most instances to bac: 
teria of the colon group, although some of the characteristics pos- 
sessed by the paratyphoid B group have been noted. 
Bipolar ovoid bacilli which closely resemble the organism of 
hemorrhagic septicemia are widely distributed in nature. They 
have been found in the soil, upon various plants, in stagnant water, 
and upon the moist nasal membranes of normal calves and hogs. 
In several instances these harmless organisms have been so increased 
in virulence by passing through animals that they finally proved to 
be fatal when injected into pigs, and in those instances the tissue 
changes, which were found .at the autopsy of the pig, were similar 
to those found in swine that had died from swine plague. 
It is thought by some writers that after the organisms have be- 
come virulent enough to cause an outbreak among animals, they will 
iater, after that infection has been overcome, return to their previous 
harmless stage. The increased virulence which is made evident by 
an attack of several animals of a single species appears to be effective 
only in animals of that particular species, and the disease does not 


