ETIOLOGICAL MOMENT IN AMERICAN SWINE PLAGUE. 261 
cells. According to the rapidity of growth and the age of the 
culture, numerical relations of the different morphological appear¬ 
ances of this organism may vary, sometimes one form and then 
another predominating in the cultures. I have seen the short 
roundish homogeneous coloring rods in the blood of animals. They 
do not group themselves into chains or zooglea masses. 
“The vegetative form must be looked upon as the coccus form 
of this organism, which does not suffer any material change of 
definition when we now and again find a somewhat longer rod— 
like forms—and we must therefore credit this organism to the 
species micrococcus.” 
Hueppe’s language is certainly as ambiguous and contradictory 
as that of the somewhat notorious Dr. Salmon with regard to the 
numerous objects which he has claimed to have seen and described 
as the cause of swine plague in tins country. 
To call the mature micro-organism, as described by Schuetz, 
Detmers and myself, a u micrococcus ” because it passes through 
a coccoid-form in its developement, or has such a form in an 
embryonal condition, is as physiologically logical as it would be to 
call an ovum a man. 
The two objects bear an equally exact relation to their respec¬ 
tive mature forms. 
In the earlier days of bacteriological research we described 
cocci as round, dipplo, oval, or oblong or sterpto cocci, according 
as they presented themselves to the eye of the observer, but 1 
defy any mortal human , with honest eyes, and what is more rare, 
a logical and honest brain, to make a “ micrococcus ” out of “ bac¬ 
teria which appear as short rods [stabchen] being two to three 
times as long as broad , and which markedly colored at the poles 
with a clear middle piece” 
It was, as has been already said, a practical stroke of genius 
when the greatest of all pathogenetic bacteriologists, Robert Koch, 
relieves us of much difficulty by classifying the micro-organisms 
as: 
1. Cocci—Absolutely round objects—not spores—that color 
homogenously throughout. 
2. Bacteria—Oval organisms, the logitudinal diameter of 
which exceeds the transverse. 
