428 
TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING 
You may perhaps pardon me for speaking of myself, hut in 
this connection I presume I will have to blow my own horn. Now, 
we have made some investigations of Texas fever and a bulletin has 
been published. We do not claim it is perfect, for we know 
there are many imperfections in it and are satisfied that we will 
find many more errors, but all these will be corrected. We have 
attempted, however, to give the facts as we have found them. 
Great stress was laid in the report of the Committee on Dis¬ 
eases on the causation of Texas fever or the germs of Texas fever. 
The judgment or opinion is based on perhaps half a dozen cases. 
We in Missouri perhaps do not know about much about Texas 
fever, or in Texas, Arkansas or Indian Territory, where we see 
only a few cases. No men maybe as well informed as the gentle¬ 
man from Baltimore, where they have seen a few cases in two or 
three years. But in the Southwest we have this advantage, that 
When we have cases of Texas fever we can diagnose it whether it 
is produced by inoculation or come from natural causes. This 
much is certain, that we know Texas fever when we see it. The 
gentleman has alluded to our work simply as our claim—that we 
have simply claimed things that probably are unti 4 ue. I do not 
claim to say that we have absolutely discovered the germ of Texas 
fever, whether it is bacteria or the precise form of the germs. We 
have not classified it. We have simply said there is a micro¬ 
organism as the causation. These germs have not been found by 
myself originally, but are the same that were seen by Dr. Salmon 
himself and described by him some years ago. 
It has been said that our work counted for nothing because 
we sent to Texas and Arkansas and Indian Territory and there 
gathered specimens. I want to know if it is impossible to gather 
specimens in that line entirely perfect and clear of any outside 
influences. It is just as possible to go to Texas with an alcohol 
lamp and gather bile perfectly pure as it is in the laboratory which 
is full of floating microbes. It is a possibility. If it is impos¬ 
sible to do that in this country, how is it we can have virus sent 
from Europe, gathered in the field and not in the laboratory ? We 
cannot have all these cases in the barn. We have got to take them 
where they are. But suppose it was true that all the work done 
