ETIOLOGY OF THE GERMAN SWINE PLAGUE. 
565 
f 
from the peculiar outbreak in cattle at Crete, winch oveiy thing 
but experimental evidence goes to show must be etiologically 
connected with that disease. The experimental evidence, pro. or 
con ., has not been furnished, simply because of the means to do 
the work with, as well as to fulfill the precautions necessaiy to 
do it safely. This organism also corresponds nearly enough to 
the above description, except that it does not color well in the 
blue tinctures and does in fuchsin. Its development on gelatine 
is not that of the swine-plague bacterium, however ; it is decidedly 
aerobic, and scarcely follows the line of puncture into the body 
of the gelatine at all, but spreads out over the superficial surface. 
It does not cause it to fructify. Its manner of proliferation is 
the same as that of the swine-plague organism ; it belongs to the 
same group. 
Now, no matter what this disease really was, the animals 
were wild enough, in an English sense of the word, but there 
was not a single pathological condition of a septic character \ as 
can be seen by the autopsies lately reported in the Review, it 
certainly was not the German “ wildseuclie ” ; yet, according to 
Hueppe’s reasoning, it should be, because of the morpho- and 
biological similarities of the organism in question to that described 
by him. According to all other observers, there is not the close 
resemblance in the organism of hen cholera to that described by 
Hueppe, which he claims for it, but in this regard I am willing 
to make some allowance for improved microscopes and methods, 
as I have no specimens of the hen-cholera organism with me. 
It is certainly clear that Hueppe has described another organ¬ 
ism belonging to the samp group as those of swine-plague, and 
bearing the closest resemblance to those of that disease, but, as I 
have previously said, neither he nor any one else can assert that 
it is the same. The typical lesions of swine plague must be pro¬ 
duced in swine with it by inoculation to prove that point. It 
would be no proof to carry the micro-organism of swine-plague 
through all these animals and produce even fatal lesults, and 
then back to swine. That would only prove that they were sus¬ 
ceptible to artificial inoculation. To be the same and identical 
organism, it must occur in such animals under natural conditions, 
