DR. BILLINGS VINDICATED. 
517 
eau of Animal Industry, in which he endeavors to uphold the 
position of the government and to upset the Nebraska inves¬ 
tigations, as well as to answer a very damaging and exact 
ciiticism published b} 7- Dr. Frosch in the ninth volume of the 
same journal. Dr. Frosch has answered Smith’s attempt at 
justifying himself in such a complete manner that the best 
thing we can do is to offer a translation of the same, as the 
article is not long. 
The foregoing article by Dr. Theobald Smith, and espec¬ 
ially his comments on a contribution of my own, induces me 
to once again place my position regarding the American swine 
plague clearly before the world. To begin at once with the 
point that seems to have mostly irritated Smith, I do not 
think that any one but he can find in my former article any 
special partiality or unj.ust discrimination in favor of the inves¬ 
tigations of F. S. Billings. Such an estimate of my contribu¬ 
tion to the question is only possible to a person who has cursor¬ 
ily read the same, or who is profoundly ignorant of the char¬ 
acter of the hygienic institute at Berlin, and the work which 
is done therein. 
As I declared in the beginning of my previous article, the 
reception of the cultures from Billings at this institute, and 
the request of Prof Koch, led me to enter upon the study of 
the American swine plague. The task which I had to under¬ 
take was not, as Smith appears to believe, to decide as to 
whom belonged the most or earliest credit for work done, but 
to see how far, from a purely scientific point of view, the so¬ 
lution of the real question of the etiology of this disease had 
been advanced, which, at the time, seemed to be buried in 
darkness in consequence of contradictory publications. 
That I should depend more upon my own investigations 
with the cultures at my disposal than upon the investigations 
of Billings, should not be questioned by Smith. That I should 
refer to the investigations of Billings, after assuring mvself of 
the identity of his germ and Salmon’s hog cholera germ, in 
order to decide as to the pathogenity (disease-producing 
power) of the germs in swine, was forced by Smith himself, 
for, much as I regret to have to repeat it, the methods and ex- 
