406 
TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING 
From these observations made in 1886, and from the negative result of his 
bacteriological work upon the disease in 1888, Smith came to the conclusion that 
the disease must be due to a blood-parasite, which for its investigation would 
need careful microscopical research. For this purpose cattle were brought to the 
experimental station as above stated. He says: “The intra-globular bodies ob¬ 
served in 1886 were found in all the ten fatal cases of Texas fever.” “ In fresh 
spleen pulps they are visible as round or oval, nearly colorless spots from | to 2 m. 
in diameter on the disk of the red corpuscles, and always somewhat exentrically 
placid. Careful focussing leaves no doubt that they are within the body of the 
corpuscles.” “ The smaller forms then appear as deeply stained cocci, about £ 
to 1 m. in diameter, situated within the unstained circle of the corpuscle. Occa¬ 
sionally the bodies are nearer two feet in diameter, and then the staining may 
be less dense. Besides the spherical forms, ovoid forms are not uncommon. 
These usually occur in pairs within the same red blood corpuscles. A still rarer 
pear-shaped form is encountered in stained preparations of the blood. It is 
rounded at one pole, while the other is pointed and sometimes drawn out as a 
short filament.” * * * “One other abnormal form found in the blood de¬ 
serves mention. These dried cover-glass preparations are stained with Loefler’s 
alkaline methylene blue. A few red corpuscles appear as if their surfaces had 
been dusted over with minute specks of coloring matter. Whether they are due 
to the anaemia, or whether they belong to the cycle of the parasite, remains to be 
determined experimentally.” 
As to the distribution of the parasites, Smith concludes that the circulating 
blood, as a rule, contains comparatively few. “They may be numerous in the 
liver and spleen, and almost absent in the blood of the right ventricle.” . . . 
“They are somewhat more numerous in the spleen than in the liver.” Three 
rabbits were inoculated with spleen pulp stirred up in salt solution without, how¬ 
ever, producing any effect. No classification of the parasite has, as yet, been 
attempted. 
The conclusions reached by the author are as follows : “It is essentially a 
blood disease. There is a continuous or paroxysmal distribution of red blood 
corpuscles, due to an intra-globular parasite; and the disease results mainly from 
the incapacity of the internal organs, primarily the liver, secondarily the spleen 
and kidneys, to transform and remove the waste products resulting from such 
destruction. In milder cases, the protracted anaemia, which results from the 
loss of corpuscles, may become the chief cause of exhaustion and death, even 
when the organs remains pervious and capable of carrying on their respective 
functions.” 
Other observers, namely, Billings, of Illinois, and Paquin, of Missouri, con¬ 
sider the disease-producing element to be a bacterium, and both claim to have 
produced the disease by inoculation. Billings classifies it as a strictly local in¬ 
fectious disease and that only. He, however, does not make use of the classifica¬ 
tion generally adopted. He describes an infectious disease as one which “ In¬ 
variably finds its origin not in, but outside, of the animal organism, i. e., in the 
earth, where its microbic cause develops under certain conditions of the climate 
and soil which offer favorable climatic and telluric influences to its development.” 
The infectious diseases of Billings are the miasmatic diseases of generally ac- 
