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The Bulletin 
cies in districts where the inferior animals are comparatively exempt 
and frequently where none of them are known to he affected at that 
time.” The following singular statements by Brewington (1876) ex¬ 
press belief in the same idea: “I do not believe that in this vicinity 
there is one in fifty persons that take the disease who gets it by using 
milk or butter from diseased animals. In many places where the dis¬ 
ease used to be most prevalent, the people used water from wells for 
cooking and drinking, but since they built cisterns and use water from 
them exclusively, they are entirely exempt from the disease.” 
b. Microbic Theory 
Several early students of milksickness doubted the validity of the 
mineral poison theory as an explanation of the causation of the dis¬ 
ease and manifested a belief in the microbe theory. They did not have 
the advantages, however, of modern bacteriological technic and, basing 
their judgment largely on the transmissibility of the disease, concluded 
that it must be caused by some microscopic organism. Both Wright 
(1827) and Reed (1856) felt that the failure of chemical studies to show 
the presence of a mineral poison and of botanical studies to inculpate 
any poisonous plant indicated that the cause must be sought among 
cryptogamic parasites. 
Because of the transmission of the disease through meat and milk, 
Burger (1825) compared milksickness with anthrax. Heeringen in 
1843, twelve years before the discovery of the anthrax bacillus, and 
Heusinger in 1853 also pointed out certain points of similarity between 
milksickness and anthrax. Wood (1858) on purely a priori grounds 
argued causation by a germ. The passage of the disease from one 
body to another and “its multiplication in the system” inclined Byford 
(1855) and DeBruler (1858) to the germ theory. Philips (1877) found 
“a great number of living, moving, spiral bacteria” in the freshly 
drawn blood and in the urine of a typical case. Woodfin (1878), too, 
believed that milksickness is a specific infection. Gardner (1880) re¬ 
ported finding “countless multitudes of actively moving, writhing, 
twisting bacteria” in the blood of a heifer suffering from trembles and 
in dogs affected by eating the flesh of this heifer. He furthermore 
found the same organism in the blood of two human patients, in the 
water of a spring which supplied this stricken family, and in milk. 
Microscopic examinations of blood by Schmidt (1877) failed to reveal 
the presence of bacteria. 
Logan (1881) committed himself to the statement that the disease 
must be due to a “contagium vivum.” 
