CHICKEN CHOLERA. 
139 
results, and as in each I had been careful to verify that an extract 
of pure bouillon, where the microbe had not been cultivated, did 
not give rise to similar manifestations, I am convinced that during 
the life of the parasite, it produced a state of narcotation or stu¬ 
pefaction which simulates the morbid phenomena so well marked 
as the sleep in chicken cholera. It is by the performance of its 
acts of nutrition that the microbe produces the gravity of its dis¬ 
ease and brings on death. It is easily understood. The microbe, 
indeed, is rerobic; it absorbs during its life large quantities of 
oxygen, and consumes many of the elements of its medium of 
culture, a fact of which one can be easily convinced by compar¬ 
ing the extracts of the bouillon of chicken before and after the 
culture of the small organism. Everything shows that this oxy¬ 
gen, essential to life, is taken from the blood globules through 
the blood vessels; and the proof is, that during life, and often 
also when approaching death, the combs of the sick animals are 
seen to become bluish, when the microbe is not yet in the blood, 
or if so, are there in such small quantities that it escapes all 
microscopical observation. This mode of asphyxia becomes pe¬ 
culiar, then, to the disease, if it cannot be attributed to a circula¬ 
tion rendered difficult by the diseased process itself. 
The animal dies, however, from the deep disorders resulting 
from the culture of the parasite in its body; by the pericarditis 
and other serous exudations; by the alterations in internal organs ; 
by the asphyxia: but the act of sleeping corresponds to a product 
born during the life of the microbe, acting upon the nervous cen¬ 
tres. The independence of the two effects in the symptoms of 
the disease, is again established by the circumstance that the ex¬ 
tract of a filtrated culture puts to sleep also hens vaccinated to the 
maximum. I will endeavor, however, to isolate the narcotic, and 
ascertain whether in a certain dose it will not kill, to learn further 
if, in that case, death will be accompanied with the internal le¬ 
sions of the disease itself. 
These facts will no doubt stimulate further pathological inves¬ 
tigations. 
Notwithstanding the length of this paper, will the Academy 
allow me to present briefly a few other peculiarities of the disease 
under consideration ? 
