ETIOLOGY OF THE GERMAN SWINE PLAGUE. 
567 
and then another predominating in the cultures. I hnve seen the 
short roundish homogeneously coloring rods in the blood of ani¬ 
mals. They do not group themselves into chains of zooglea 
masses. The vegetatine form must be looked upon as the ‘ coccus 
form ’ of this organism , which does not suffer any material change 
of definition when we now and again find somewhat longer rod¬ 
like forms, and we must therefore credit this organism to the 
species micrococci .” 
It so happens that both Hueppe and I are out of the Koch 
school, though I desire to be known more as a pathologist than 
bacteriologist, and shall detail the latter work to an assistant as 
soon as I can. The above passage will undoubtedly give much 
pleasure to the Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry. It cer¬ 
tainly should, as the language is fully as contradictory and mysti¬ 
fying as his. In the earlier days of bacteriology we described 
cocci—as double or dipplo cocci, and ovoid or oblong, thereby 
meaning that the object was roundish, and that its longitudinal 
exceeded its transverse diameter. Then come Koch with his 
practical classification. 
1. Cocci, absolutely round micro-organism. 
2. Bacteria, ovoid organisms in which the longitudinal ex¬ 
ceeded the transverse diameter. 
3. Bacilli—or rods—which require no definition. Nowhere 
comes Heuppe, a prolific author and accredited observer, and 
describes this object in his opening remarks on its morphology as 
“Im Blute er schenit ein grosser Theil der Bakterien als Kurzes 
Stab cheu , welches 2 vis 3 mol langer als breit ist, stark 
abgerundete Enden ” which literally translated is : In the 
blood the greater number of the bacteria appear as short rods, 
which are two to three times longer than wide, with strongly 
rounded ends. Now how the devil Hueppe or anybody else can 
transform that into a coccus—or call a short rod in one place, 
ind then say that the same object should be classed with the mi¬ 
crococci—“ Wir mussen die Bakterien der Gattung Mikrococcus 
Zurveisen v passes the comprehension of any sane mortal who can 
mderstand the meaning of words in either English or German, 
[t is an absolute contradiction. A “ stabchen” is a “ micrococcus ” 
