498 
W. L. WILLIAMS. 
limit as to number, generate, mature and perish, while the dis¬ 
ease spreads and augments, or sometimes declines in varying 
degrees. 
These propositions are admitted, so far as is known to 
your chairman, by all scientists, whether they believe the 
disease contagious or non-contagious. 
3. Experimentation, the crucial test as to the transmissi- 
bility of a disease, fully bears out the above facts. Johne (1) 
transmitted the disease by inocculation in 75 per cent, of trials 
with fresh material from a diseased animal. 
Ponfick (2) likewise succeeded readily in transmitting the 
disease in cattle by intra-venous and subcutaneous injections, 
but failed to transmit it by feeding the fungus to cattle, and 
had negatiye results in inoculations in dogs and rabbits. 
Bodamer (3) records six successful inoculations out of thir¬ 
teen trials with dogs, cats and rabbits—animals apparently 
only slightly susceptible. 
Israel (4) and Kolter succeeded in inoculating rabbits with 
actinomyces from man, while Cruikshank (5) had a similar 
result from inoculating cattle with the fungus from an affected 
man. 
Clinical observations lend strong support to the theory of 
the transmissibility of the disease from animal to animal. 
Casewell (6) reports an extensive outbreak of actinomycosis 
in cattle and hogs bearing strong evidence of indirect trans¬ 
mission from animal to animal by means of food soiled with 
discharges from actinomycotic abscesses of an affected animal. 
Your chairman has observed similar instances where 50 to 75 
per cent, of a cattle herd was found affected, apparently due in 
a great measure to transmission in this way from animal to 
animal. In company with Casewell and other other veterin- 
(1) Johne, Actinomykosis Bericht ueber d. Veterinarwesen in Konigreick 
Saschen, 1881. 
(2) Ponfick, Die Aktinomykosis der Mensshen, eine neue Infectious-krank- 
heit, Berlin, 1862. 
(8) Jour. Comp. Med. and Surgery, Yol. X, p. 120. 
(4) Centralblatt f. Bacteriologie n. Parasiterkunde, B. LII, No. 14, 1888. 
(5) An. Rep. Ag’l Dep., England, 1885. 
(6) An. Rep. State Bd. Live St’k Com., Illinois, 1890. 
