Louping III. 
G35 
is not directly concerned with the disease of the sheep, since the 
rodents experimented upon need not be, and probably are not, 
susceptible to the “ louping ill.” 
3. In the heart and pericardium, including the gelatinous infil- 
tration, no microbes could be demonstrated, either by the microscope 
or by cultivation. 
4. In the thyroid gland no microbes could be demonstrated, 
except in one case where several colonies of a gelatine-liquefying 
coccus — a form of sarcina — were obtained in one out of several 
culture tubes. In microscopic specimens of the fresh thyroid of 
this same case, a few examples of dumb-bell- and sarcina- like cocci 
were also demonstrable. 
5. From the diseased portions of the lung the same short 
bacillus that had been found in the cerebral fluid was also obtained 
in two cases. It formed a yellowish growth, not liquefying the 
gelatine. In each of the cases in question considerable portions of 
the lung were involved, and in the cover-glass specimens made of 
the fresh lung in these cases numerous examples of these short 
bacilli were demonstrable. 
In the remaining cases, a few colonies of other and different 
species (longish motile bacilli, cocci, or short motile bacilli resem- 
bling the Bacillus coli) were obtained by culture from the diseased 
portions of the lung. These microbes, however, owing to their 
great scarcity in cultivation, and to the fact that each was only 
exceptionally found, may be dismissed as accidental contamina- 
tions. 
We arrive, then, at the conclusion that the only microbe which 
has any claim — small, I admit — to be considered as in any way 
causally related to the “ louping ill ” disease, is the small bacillus 
described above. This was cultivated from the cerebral fluid of six 
cases, and in addition from the lung of two of them. In two of the 
six cases the microbe was recovered from the cerebral fluid in such 
numerous colonies that it seems very probable that it has an impor- 
tant bearing on the causation of the disease ; for it can hardly be 
assumed that a microbe, numerously present in the cerebral fluid, 
could be merely an accident. That this same microbe was not 
demonstrated by cultivation in eleven cases is, I admit, an argu- 
ment against its being the specific microbe of the disease ; but it 
has to be remembered that most of these cases were sheep or lambs 
that were killed in an early phase of the disease, and that for each 
cultivation tube only a small drop, or a fraction of a drop, of the 
cerebral fluid was used ; so that it l’emains quite possible that in 
the early phase of the disease the microbe is not yet abundantly 
present in the cerebral fluid. 
But the argumentum crucis is whether or not this short bacillus, 
when introduced in one way or another into the normal sheep, is 
capable of producing the disease. As to this, I inoculated subcuta- 
neously two lambs with the cerebral fluid of a sheep killed in an 
early phase of the disease ; but the fluid had been kept in sealed 
tubes about a week prior to its being used. The lambs in question 
