Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 4 (of 5)Law, James
Science
Text book of veterinary medicine, Volume 4 (of 5)
Law, James
Veterinary medicine
Cadeac even advocates the theory that the same germ possessed of greater
or lesser virulence, is always present in ordinary stables and horses,
and habitually causes in exposed or debilitated animals an ordinary
fibrinous pneumonia with no perceptible tendency to transmission by
contagion; that, in other cases when a considerable number of horses
have their defensive powers impaired, it gains a wide extension; and,
that in some such cases, the germ that has been living as a
comparatively harmless saprophyte, suddenly acquires an unwonted
potency, and breaking down the barrier of partial immunity, attacks
exposed animals on a large scale and irrespective of weather
perturbations, or debilitated conditions. He quotes from Trasbot
instances that seem to support this hypothesis, which is not at all in
disaccord with the habits of bacterial life, yet we require a solid
basis in bacteriological experiment to make it unassailable.
_Bacteriology._ Siedamgrotzky (1882) found in the hæmorrhagic centres in
the affected lung and in the pleural exudate _micrococci_. Dieckerhoff
(1882) and Mendelsohn (1883) found in the pleural exudate streptococci.
Chain cocci were also found by Peterlein (1884), Perroncito (1885),
Delamotte and Chantemesse (1888), and Mosselman and Lienaux (1893).
Schütz (1887) found a diplococcus which he studied very fully and this
is corroborated by Lustig’s ovoid bacterium, by Cadeac’s micrococcus and
diplococcus. In Dr. V. A. Moore’s cultures at the N. Y. S. Veterinary
College cocci were found constantly in pure culture, sometimes as a
diplococcus, but under slightly altered conditions the streptococcus
form predominated. As the difference between two, and three or more
cocci in chain form is merely a question of early or late separation of
cocci which multiply in line, the apparent discrepancies in the above
observations do not imply any real difference in the microbe.
Inoculated in pure cultures the Schütz diplococcus killed mice in 24 to
48 hours with enhanced virulence of the germ. In the _rabbit_,
_subcutem_, it usually killed in 24 to 48 hours, but some survived;
_intravenously_ or _intratrachealy_ it killed more certainly and
speedily and in either case with pleural, pericardial and even
peritoneal lesions. In the _Guinea-pig_, _subcutem_, it caused extensive
effusion, and death in two to six days with chest lesions. In the _dog_
it caused hyperthermia, but no marked lesion and no mortality. In the
_horse_ there were no infectious resultant lesions. A pure culture
thrown into the lung tissue of an old horse at the N. Y. S. V. College,
determined an extended pleuritic adhesion and lung hepatization. The age
of this subject was opposed to any marked susceptibility. The apparent
immunity of the horse in Schutze’s cases might depend on the
insusceptibility of the animals selected during or after an epizoötic,
or on the absence of the predisposing causes so strongly insisted on by
Cadeac.
Rats, chickens and pigs proved immune.
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