ETIOLOGICAL MOMENT IN AMERICAN SWINE PLAGUE. 125 
clear and isolated form at a much less expense to the eye and 
time than in any other. 
Animals are then to be inoculated from the cultures, especi¬ 
ally the species in which the disease occurs under natural condi¬ 
tions, and if the same clinical and necroscopical phenomena re¬ 
sult, under these experimental conditions, and the same germ can 
again be cultivated and is invariably found in the blood and tis¬ 
sue, its pathogenetic history has been in part discovered. Culti¬ 
vations should be made from every animal inoculated, but in the 
future, when making field autopsies, it will suffice to consider the 
natural phenomena and to examine the blood and fluids by object 
glass specimens. In obtaining material for cultivations from 
autopsies made in the field, it is best to have two one-gallon pails, 
made of heavy tin, with very tightly-fitting covers. One of these 
should be kept full of a five per cent, solution of carbolic acid 
and taken to the field in that condition. In the other should be 
a number of perfectly clean large napkins, soaking in the same 
solution, which should also be taken to the field in the same man¬ 
ner. The first pail should be emptied as soon as the operator is 
ready to remove the organs, which should be done as rapidly as 
possible. An assistant should be on hand, and as soon as the 
organ is free immediately wrap it up in one of the above-men¬ 
tioned cloths, which he has previously wrung out, and so on with 
each organ. This serves to sterilize the outside of the organs, 
and they are ready to obtain cultures from, on arrival at the 
laboratory, which must be done with all the precaution of hot 
knives, etc. 
The plate culture isolation method can also be used at any 
time, but the above is far more practical for primary studies. 
PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS UPON THE BACTERIUM OF SWINE PLAGUE. 
The micro-organism which, independent of any previous in¬ 
vestigations by others, I have discovered and experimentally 
proved to be the cause of genuine American swine plague—the 
most common and frequent as well as devastating of all the por¬ 
cine complications popularly termed “ hog cholera,” so far as we 
now know—has been obtained, in the previously described man- 
