ETIOLOGICAL MOMENT IN AMERICAN SWINE PLAGUE. 167 
to venture an opinion. Should it prove to be true, it will become 
a very valuable diagnostic condition. 
Since the reading of a preliminary announcement of my work 
by my assistant, Dr. Bowhill {American Veterinary Review , 1. c.) 
I have made more experiments and observations, and am now 
prepared to make some radical, and perhaps seemingly ultra, an¬ 
nouncements, which I am positive future investigations will con¬ 
firm, opposed as they are to commonly received opinions. I will 
also state that these conclusions will be supplemented by con¬ 
vincing experimental and clinical proof in future papers. 
I wish also to say that I have been decidedly misled as to the 
value of anterical lesions in swine plague, by the publications of 
other observers and writers. 
These conclusions are : 
1. That the American swine plague is, first—the most impor¬ 
tant of all—an extra organismal infectious septicaemia. 
Characterized : 
(a) . By a peculiar swollen hemorrhagic condition of the lymph 
gland. 
(b) . By pneumonia of a peculiar character. 
This is all the American swine plague consists of; other le¬ 
sions accompany it, but are not essential to it. 
2. That the only and genuine swine plague is caused by, ap¬ 
parently, the same germ as that discovered by Schuetz in the Ger¬ 
man disease; and, if the natural characteristics are the same, that 
the diseases are identical. 
My conclusions are largely supported by the observations and 
conclusions of Dr. Detmers, who says: 
“No matter in which way, or by what means, the schizo- 
phytes enter the animal organism and get into the blood. The 
first capillary system to which they come is the lungs, which 
may account for the fact that, in swine plague, morbid changes in 
the lungs, consisting of exudation, extravasation of blood, and, 
finally, hepatization, are never absent.” 
At least I have found them in every post-mortem examina¬ 
tion : and in the last three years I have made about three hun¬ 
dred. 
