AN OUTBREAK OF RABBIT SEPTICAEMIA. 
285 
AN OUTBREAK OF RABBIT SEPTIC/EMIA 
WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THE NATURE OF THE DISEASE AND 
ITS SPECIFIC ORGANISM. 
By Verantjs A. Moore, B.S., M.D., and F. L. Kilborne, B.Ag., B.V.S. 
Of the Division of Animal Pathology, Bureau of Animal Industry, 
Departmentof Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 
In the winter and spring of 1893 a considerable number of 
rabbits, in the breeding-pens at the Experiment Station of the 
Bureau of Animal Industry, perished from a disease which 
was characterized by exudative pleuritis with or without 
pneumonia. In a few of the animals there was marked peri¬ 
tonitis. In the exudates, a germ which was identified as the 
bacillus of rabbit septicaemia was invariably demonstrated. 
The infrequencv with which spontaneous outbreaks of rabbit 
septicaemia occur led to a somewhat careful study of this dis¬ 
ease, the more important features of which, together with the 
result of a few investigations with the specific organism, are 
here recorded. 
The investigations of rabbit septicaemia which have hereto¬ 
fore been made have pointed out two very interesting facts. 
(1) *The existence of a bacillus in decomposed albuminous sub¬ 
stance, and in contaminated waterf which is capable of pro¬ 
ducing a rapidly fatal septicaemia in rabbits when they are 
inoculated with these substances or with a pure culture of 
the bacillus, and (2) the appearance of a disease in rabbits 
caused by a bacillus closely related to, if not identical with, 
the one found in the first instance. The only report of this 
disease occurring spontaneously in rabbits appears to be that 
of Dr. Theobald Smithy in 1887. Although it is not our pur¬ 
pose to discuss the identity of the germ which is capable of 
inducing a fatal septicaemia when injected into the rabbits, 
*Koch, Wundinfectionskrankheiten, Leipzig, 1878, p. 59. 
tGaffky, Mittheilungen a, d, Kais. Gesundheitsamte, 1881,1. 
JA contribution to the study of the microbe of rabbit septicaemia. The 
Journal of Comparative Medicine and Surgery, Vol. VIII, (1887), p. 24. 
