ETIOLOGICAL MOMEN IN AMERICAN SWINE PLAGUE. 57 
Nebraska. This has all been shown elsewhere. Since then my 
own work has arrived at such a degree of completion that the 
mass of clinical and experimental notes that have accumulated 
demanded that they be at once arranged in some systematic order, 
in order to prepare for future work in the spring. 
This necessitated my making a most exact study of everything 
that had been contributed to the etiology of swine plague in this 
country and in Europe, with the exception of the work of Dr. 
Salmon. 
My surprise can well be imagined when on doing this with 
regard to the work of Dr. Detmers, I found that he had (in the 
report of the Department of Agriculture, 1880-’81), described a 
very different organism to that mentioned in the report of 1878, 
but had not given it any distinguishing name (which, had it been 
done, would not have escaped my attention), and that from a 
mass of somewhat contradictory statements, it was possible to 
pick out evidence showing conclusively that he had had at times 
the. true etiological organism of American swine plague under 
observation. ******* 
1 shall show that every right of priority for the original dis¬ 
covery of the only and true germ of American swine plague be¬ 
longs to Dr. Detmers, and should the disease-producing germ 
prove, eventually, to be identical (as I am now inclined to believe 
against my former opinions) with the germ discovered by Loeff- 
ler and Schutz in connection with the German swine plague, al¬ 
though these claims do not interfere with my own as an inde¬ 
pendent and secondary discoverer of the same micro-organism. 
My work in this regard not only confirms that of Dr. Detmers in 
every essential, but, I hope, goes to correct some of his miscon¬ 
ceptions, and will, I know, place this question of the etiology of 
American swine plague upon an impregnable scientific founda¬ 
tion. I also desire to testify to the extreme value of Dr. Det¬ 
mers’ field observations, which give much evidence as to the na¬ 
ture of this porcine pest which it would take a long time to col¬ 
lect in the same practical form. 
Dr. Detmers, and especially Dr. Law, have also given much 
valuable evidence of the possible prevention of this disease by a 
