FRANK S. BILLINGS. 
260 
English word to express the meaning, I shall use the word “ wild- 
seuche ” in the following pages. Hueppe’s hypothesis with refer¬ 
ence to the German swine plague will be found to be equally 
applicable to the disease in this country should his conclusions be 
finally supported by clinical, field and experimental evidence, 
which I am very much inclined to doubt. 
Of the micro-etiological organism of the “ wildseuche,” 
Hueppe says : 
“The bacteria appear as short rods—stabchen—in the blood, 
being two to three times as long as broad, and have distinctly 
rounded ends, markedly colored poles, and a clear uncolored 
middle piece; four of these objects correspond to the diameter of 
a red blood-cell. 
“Upon cultivating this organism, in gelatine, they appear as 
isolated colonies, or they coalesce and form a grayish-white line, 
according to the quantity of material introduced on the wire. The 
edges of the canal are formed by the finest of isolated colonies. 
On the surface of the gelatine, which never becomes fluid, is 
formed a circumscribed growth. Their development upon agar 
agar is similar, the color being more of a grayish-white. Upon 
blood serum they form a white, transparent, opalescent coating. 
In boullion, a cloudiness first occurs, followed by the precipitation 
of the objects to the bottom of the vessel, where they form a 
greyish-yellow mass.” 
Having given the above description cf the nature of the 
organism of the “ wildseuche,” Hueppe says: “ I look upon the 
vegetative form of this organism, in cultures and in the blood, as 
resembling cocci, according to their stage of development, [and 
also as to whether one sees them end on or not—B.] they present 
themselves to the eye, as round, or slightly elongated, elipsoid 
bodies, which take up the coloring material in all parts of the 
body. 
“ This form soon extends itself to a shorter, or longer, object, 
with distinctly rounded ends. The plasma of these short objects 
differentiates within the capsule, and isolates itself at either pole 
before fission takes place, while the capsule still retains the form 
of the short rod. It finally separates into two young roundish 
