138 Annual Report of the Royal Veterinary College. 
unable in many cases to detect the disease at an early stage. There 
is good reason to hope that by the aid of mallein it will now be 
possible to pick out every horse in a stud that is the subject of 
glanders, and with this knowledge the eradication of the disease will 
present little difficulty where the expense of slaughtering the 
affected animals can be faced. Mallein is now manufactured at the 
Royal Veterinary College, and supplied to veterinary surgeons free 
of charge. 
S\yine Erysipelas. 
Although the term Swine Fever in a sense implies that the pig 
is the subject of only one kind of fever, it has for some years been 
known that there are three perfectly distinct epizootic or infectious 
diseases of swine. The first of these is the disease with which we 
are only too familiar in this country under the name of swine 
fever ; the second is swine erysipelas ; and the third is swine plague. 
It has generally been assumed that the latter two diseases, which 
are the cause of great annual loss among pigs in most European 
countries, do not occur in Great Britain ; but several observations 
prove that supposition to be erroneous, at least as regards one of 
them. 
Swine erysipelas has for long been recognised as an important 
disease abroad. It is caused by a minute germ — a bacillus, which 
was first accurately described by the German professor Loeffler. 
This germ is found in large numbers in the blood of pigs dead 
from the disease, and its presence or absence is a sure guide in 
diagnosis. The disease, like swine fever, is readily spread by 
contagion and infection, but it differs clinically from swine fever in 
being as a rule more rapidly fatal. Death or recovery usually 
occurs within two or three days, and pigs that have passed through 
one attack are, for a time at least, protected against a second. 
But, strange to say, the disease in some individuals runs a chronic 
course. This important fact was first recognised by Professor Bang, 
of Copenhagen, who showed that in this chronic form the affected 
pig may linger in an unthriving state for months, and that when it 
dies, or is killed, the post-mortem examination usually reveals 
extensive disease of the valves of the heart. These valves, which 
are normally thin, smooth, and membranous, become greatly thick- 
ened, and acquire a cauliflower appearance from the formation of soft, 
irregular excrescences on their surface. In the substance of these 
excrescences Bang found the bacillus of swine erysipelas in great 
numbers, and thus proved conclusively the true nature of the con- 
dition. 
During the past year the heart of a pig was sent to the 
Pathological Laboratory of the Royal Veterinary College by Captain 
Russell, of Grantham, and a naked-eye inspection of it showed that 
its valves were the seat of cauliflower growths resembling those 
described by Bang. Microscopic examination of sections made from 
these growths revealed enormous numbers of small bacilli, agreeing 
in form and size with the germs of swine erysipelas. The history 
