NEWS AND SUNDRIES. 
337 
ears to us, to say the least, curious how it is possible for any 
to consider rabid animals, to witness the symptoms they pre- 
the progress of the disease, and finally their death, and 
bt whether it actually exists. It is to us almost as much of a 
rise to find persons doubting whether there is, or may be, 
i a disease as hydrophobia in the human species, especially as 
imunicated by the bites of rabid animals. If it is not well es- 
lished that such a disease as rabies really exists, then, for our- 
'es, we hardly know what can be considered established. And 
have been to a less degree surprised at the readiness with 
ch M. Pasteur and his proposed method of arresting or pre¬ 
ting hydrophobia in man have been condemned, too often by 
se who have given but little attention either to the character 
lie man himself or upon course of experimentation upon which 
views are based .”—New York Medical Journal. 
Discovery of the Pathogenic Organism of the Swine- 
iGUE. —The extreme difficulties of reaching certainty in 
:teriological researches must be apparent to anyone who has 
lowed the record of its work in the past ten years. An ex- 
lent illustration is found in the study which has been made of 
virus of hog-cholera (swine-plague, infectious pneumo-enter- 
). Dr. D. E. Salmon gives some account of this in a recent 
le of The Sanitarian. Hog-cholera costs this country some 
S 3 nty-five millions of dollars yearly, and hence deserves atten- 
n from economists as well as men of science. It is an infec- 
iis disease spreading epidemically through herds. In 1876 Dr. 
Klein described a micrococcus which he found in the tissues 
animals suffering from the disease. In 1878 he found, culti- 
ied, and inoculated a bacillus, and thought it pathogenic, 
tely, however, he has attributed the disease to a different bacil- 
i occurring in the form of short rods. In 1880 Dr. Salmon 
md and cultivated a micrococcus which he believed, until 
ely, to be the essential virus of swine-plague. In 1883 M. 
steur announced that the rouget of I ranee, believed to be iden- 
al with our swine-plague, was caused by a dumb-bell-shaped 
crobion. This germ, he said, could be attenuated and made to 
b as a vaccine. We are told, however, by Dr. Salmon, that the 
