Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/786

766 The sickness of barn-door poultry, which is commonly called cholera, is caused by the presence in the blood of a small micrococusmicrococcus [sic] or bacterium in the form of the figure 8, differing, therefore, in form from Bacillus anthracis, but also an aërobie. It may be cultivated in chicken-broth, neutralized by potash, while it soon dies in the extract of yeast, which is so well adapted to Bacillus anthracis. The microbe of this disease may also be attenuated by culture, and it may be done more easily than in the case of anthrax, since it is not necessary to raise the temperature, as the bacterium of fowl-cholera does not produce spores under culture. Pasteur has therefore been able to prepare an attenuated virus well adapted to protect fowls from further attacks of this disease.

The disease affecting swine, which is called rouget, or swine-fever, in the south of France, has been recently studied by Detmers in the United States, where it is also very prevalent, and by Pasteur in the department of Vaucluse. It is a kind of pneumo-enteritis. These observers consider that the disease is caused by a very slender microbe, formed, like that of fowl-cholera, in the shape of the figure 8, but more minute. Others say that there is a bacillus which was observed by Klein as early as 1878 in swine attacked by this disease. In spite of the apparent contradiction, it is probable that we have only two forms of the same microbe, for the bacillus in Klein's culture at first



resembles Bacterium termo, in the form of an 8, before it is elongated into rods. Pasteur has succeeded in making cultures of microbes in the figure 8. He has inoculated swine with the attenuated form, after which they have been able to resist the disease, so there is reason to hope that in the near future this new vaccine, containing the attenuated microbe, may become the safeguard of our pig-sties.

An epidemic which raged in Paris in 1881 was called the typhoid fever of horses, and was fatal to more than fifteen hundred animals belonging to the General Omnibus Company in that city. This disease is also produced by a microbe, with which Pasteur was able to inoculate other animals (rabbits); for this purpose he made use of the serous discharge from the horses' nostrils. The inoculated rabbits died with all the symptoms and lesions characteristic of the disease. The attenuation of this microbe by culture is difficult, since at the end of a