412 
THOMAS BOWHILL. 
afore-mentioned mitigating causes, and remains to be determined 
hereafter. On the other hand, Scliutz claims that the German 
swine plague is an infectious pneumonia, and does not mention, 
in the few autopsies which he reports, the ulcerated condition of 
the large intestine (“ especially ”) and the peculiar circumscribed 
indurations which are so frequently met with in American hogs. 
In the majority of our cases, and especially in very acute or 
severe ones (a characteristic autopsy of which will soon follow), 
the microscopical phenomena most certainly justify Dr. Klein’s 
conclusion, that the disease in American, as in English hogs, is a 
pneumo-enteritis, though both in infection, under natural or ex¬ 
perimental conditions, we meet with in cases in which the lesions 
are limited, more expressly to one than to the other of these 
complications. This micro-organism, as aforesaid, is an oval 
body, and hence, according to Koch, a bacterium—who classifies 
the pathogenic bacterise into (a) bacilli or rods, (b) cocci or round 
bodies; (c) bacteriae or oval bodies. This bacteria colors best in 
methyl violet, though-also with gentian violet, methylen green 
and fuchsin, though not so satisfactorily. Its protoplasm seems 
to be differentiated into two chemically different substances; for, 
when not allowed to remain too long in the coloring fluid, the 
poles, or ends of the bacteria, assume a dark color, separated by 
an uncolored band of substance: the colored olasrna extends 
7 t 
along the peripheries of the organism in a fine line uniting at the 
poles; this exactly corresponds to the description given by Prof. 
Scliutz (see the Report of the Imperial Board of Health of Ger¬ 
many, 1886, page 381), who says: “If the bacteria are colored 
in a solution of gentian violet, they show in their central part 
an uncolored space surrounded by a blue colored line; the 
quantity of this colored mass is greater at the poles, so that 
the ends appear more strongly colored; they appear of a homo¬ 
genous blue,” when intensely colored. I think it well to men¬ 
tion that the coloring power of the solutions is much increased 
by adding the necessary quantity of a saturated alcoholic solu¬ 
tion of the coloring fluid to a little more than equal parts of 
a solution of caustic potash, one to ten thousand of water. 
This organism offers some very puzzling biological conditions 
