MISCELLANEOUS INFECTIONS 599 
both occasions there was more than one death before the 
specific nature of the disease was identified yet, note- 
wortliily, no spread to the other birds in the same exhibi- 
tion house occurred. 
Distemper, a disease variously held as due to cocci, to 
influenza-like organisms and to a filterable virus, may ap- 
pear in sporadic or epizootic form. The diagnosis during 
life is not so easy unless all the cardinal features are 
present, while after death the same thing holds good. I 
am inclined to think that from the standpoint of diagnos- 
tic accuracy, the term is used much too loosely, a ready 
excuse for such laxity however being that it stimulates 
to greater care in hygiene. Whether or not B. bronchi- or 
canisepticus be the cause of the disease, organisms cor- 
responding to it can be found in stained smears from 
nearly every case in which the respiratory, cutaneous, 
nervous and internal signs suggest the disease. To make 
a diagnosis of distemper it is my practice to require at 
least three of the cardina;l clinicopathological features, 
whereupon, if the bacterial findings be as described, the 
denomination is permitted. This was dictated because 
during the period, now happily well in the past, when the 
cats and dogs suffered frequently with enteritis, naso- 
pharyngeal signs occasionally presented themselves or 
spasms were reported, but no skin eruptions appeared, 
yet seldom were all of these signs combined nor could 
w^e find the bipolar organisms. I note that in 1915 Doctor 
Blair of New York observed a toxic enteritis resembling 
but not identical with distemper. As with our cases 
he failed to find that the condition was communicable. 
We ascribed our cases to spoiled food — fowl heads or 
dirty horse meat (see page 179). Our acceptable examples 
of distemper number three, two ferrets and a lynx, but 
very suggestive cases were found in foxes, wolves and 
raccoons. Since writing the above notes, sixteen wolves, 
foxes and wild dogs died in an outbreak of distemper 
imported by a newly arrived specimen admitted to the 
