56 
FRANK S. BILLINGS. 
THE ETIOLOGICAL MOMENT IN AMERICAN SWINE PLAGUE. 
The time seems to have come when I should begin to make 
some personal announcements of the results of my researches 
upon this porcine malady. 
In the following paper I intend to confine myself almost en¬ 
tirely to its etiology. 
In an article which I published in Nebraska papers some time 
since, the following statement was made which requires some 
correction. I then said : 
“ While Drs. Law and Detmers have made some investiga¬ 
tions into the cause and nature of American swine plague in years 
past, they have but little practical value, and do not require con¬ 
sideration at this time, and it is especially to those of Dr. D. E. 
Salmon, Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry at Washing¬ 
ton, that I desire to call attention at present.” * * * 
In explanation of my assertion with regard to the work of 
Messrs. Law and Detmers and in justice to myself, I must first 
say that my attention at that time had only been given to the 
characteristics of the cause of swine plague, and that in looking 
up that subject I found that Dr. Law had certainly not described 
any micro-organism such as I had found and proved to be the 
cause of swine plague, beyond all manner of question. With re¬ 
gard to Dr. Detmer’s claims, I was misled by his remarks in the 
report of the Department of Agriculture of 1878, in which he 
names the object seen by him “ bacillus suis,” and certainly de¬ 
scribes a rod-organism, and as I did not then see any change of 
name in subsequent reports, in any of the headings, and did not 
carefully look over every word of the text, I assumed that Dr. 
Detmers was still describing the same object, particularly as I 
saw no allusion to anything else in Dr. Salmon’s reports, which I 
did study word for word and sentence for sentence. An acci¬ 
dent led me to the study of Dr. Salmon’s work, which was his 
attack upon that of the State Veterinarian of Nebraska, which, 
while I knew it to be incorrect, still 1 did not care to let go actu¬ 
ally unchallenged. I then studied Dr. Salmon’s work with the 
result of at once discovering many inconsistencies in it, and fully 
as much untrustworthiness as in that of the State Veterinarian of 
