450 
TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING 
' * I 
Texas fever belongs to the malarial type of diseases. The germ resembles 
the malarial organisms of Laveran. It is found within the red corpuscles of the 
blood and may be demonstrated in them before the death of the animal. We 
have not been able to cultivate it, and do not believe that it can be cultivated by 
any of the methods now in use by bacteriologists. 
We have studied outbreaks that were caused by cattle from the tide water 
section of Virginia, from North Carolina and from Texas, and in every case we 
have found the same micro-organism present in the blood. In some cases almost 
eveey corpuscle would be invaded. These parasites rapidly destroy the corpus¬ 
cles and the number of these soon falls to one-half, one-third, one-fourth, or even 
one-fiftli of what is found in health. This destruction of the corpuscles of 
course accounts for the excretion of the red coloring matter in the urine. 
The possibility of the infection of pastures by ticks has also been demon¬ 
strated. For two years we have picked the ticks from Southern cattle and 
scattered them over experimental pastures, and we have found that susceptible 
cattle would contract the fever from these pastures as readily as from those upon 
which the Southern cattle themselves had been placed. It is a fact, therefore, 
that ticks may infect pastures without the presence of Southern cattle. Whether 
the Southern cattle can infect pastures without the presence of ticks is still an 
open question. We had an experiment planned to settle this problem the present 
summer, but it failed by the unexpected appearance of the ticks upon this lot 
of cattle which we had supposed were protected from them. 
The main results of our Texas fever investigations may therefore be summed 
up as follows : 
Texas fever belongs to the malarial group of diseases. 
It is caused by small micro-organisms which are found in the red blood 
corpuscles, and which are not bacteria, but bodies of the nature of malarial germs 
of Laveran. 
Pastures may be infected by ticks from the bodies of Southern cattle. 
While this is only a beginning of the work necessary to elucidate the many 
interesting and important questions connected with Texas fever, it gives us a 
solid foundation from which to build, and indicates the direction in which future 
researches must be made in order to secure successful results. 
The paper of Dr. Salmon was illustrated "by numerous enlarged 
views of different germs, cast upon the canvas, the diameters of 
the germs being multiplied thirty thousand times and their pecu¬ 
liarities pointed out and explained in detail by Dr. Salmon during 
the course of his lecture. Among others was a specimen from 
gelatine culture, one day old; hog cholera germs ; the same germs 
from a gelatine culture fifteen days old; the same germ from a 
liquid culture, one day old; a germ described by scientific men as 
the swine plague germ; the swine plague germ obtained by inocu¬ 
lation ; a hog cholera germ with an original stain; a preparation 
from an animal afflicted with Texas fever; a preparation of hog 
