A NEW PARASITIC DISEASE OF CATTLE. 
633 
Chicken cholera and rabbit septicaemia have long been known 
to owe their origin to such an organism. Kitt has explained 
the aetiology of cattle-plague; Oreste and Armanni have 
made public interesting investigations upon an extended buf¬ 
falo disease in Italy ; Loffler and Schiitz have described a 
swine septicaemia and pneumonia, under the title “swine 
epidemic and lastly, Poels has written upon a septic-pleuro¬ 
pneumonia of calves. All of these diseases were ascribed to 
stationary bacteria which were exceedingly similar in their 
morphological, biological, and to some degree their pathogenic 
characteristics; it is therefore maintained by Htippe and 
others that they are only physiological varieties of a single 
species, which is geographically widely spread. 
I am prepared to add still one disease of calves, which is 
in many particulars interesting. At the end of January, 1888, 
there suddenly appeared upon a farm in Jutland, containing 
some 200 head of cattle, a malignant affection which attacked 
only the young animals; within a few days sixteen calves 
about two months old died, in from twelve to twenty-four 
hours after becoming sick. They showed high fever (105.8°) 
and diarrhoea; upon post-mortem the blood was coagulated 
and of a dark red color; a recent and extensive fibrinous 
pleuritis associated with pericarditis and ecchymotic spots 
under the pericardium; a well marked gastro-enteritis. Some 
did not show such extensive alterations as others. With one 
individual the course seemed chronic ; on the under surface of 
the neck there developed a medium hard, painful, oedamatous 
and more or less warm swelling. Veterinarian Christman was 
unable to place a diagnosis upon these patients, which he was 
treating, and therefore sent me a blood coagulum with a por¬ 
tion of the spleen to examine; he inquired if he had not to do 
with anthrax. No anthrax bacilli were present; on the con¬ 
trary there were a few of the ordinary round-ended cadaver 
bacilli, together with a quantity of very small bacteria which 
took a watery gentian-violet stain more intensely at their 
poles than in the middle. 
Two mice were inoculated with small pieces of spleen, and 
both died within thirty to thirty-six hours; upon section the 
