Diagnosis. It is recognized as an infection of domestic water fowl by its attacking the larger proportion of that class of animals exposed to it. It is supposed that those which escape do so because of immunity due to a previous attack, or by reason of the absence of any wound of the mouth, throat or stomach by which the germ might enter. It is distinguished from fowl (chicken) cholera by the immunity of the chicken in this case. It is differentiated from Klein’s diarrhœal enteritis of fowls, by the fact that neither pigeon nor rabbit is immune. From the duck cholera of Cornil and Loupet, it is diagnosed by the immunity of the chicken only, while the rodents and pigeon suffer.
The germ is manifestly one of the family of bacilli of the colon group, found in the different septicæmias, but sufficiently distinctive from these other forms, in its pathogenesis, to demand a separate place in connection with sanitary work.
Treatment is hopeless from our present point of view.
Prevention is the rational resort. In the case of those raising geese from the egg, it is imperative to abandon, for the season at least, any pastures that may have become contaminated. It would be better still to subject such pastures to cultivated crops for one or two years. The pens should be thoroughly disinfected or abandoned and burned. Mr. Cornell used his infected pens for ducks without evil result. The drainage from infected pastures or pens must be guarded against, no geese nor ducks being allowed on land through which, or on which it passes, and no water receiving such drainage being employed for geese. In the case of feeders or handlers of geese who buy the birds in large numbers from many sources, a subsidiary quarantine should be constantly maintained, by enclosing the birds in as small groups as possible in separate pens, so that infection in one pen will not endanger the whole flock. When infection is shown in a pen, the diseased birds should be at once destroyed and burned, the pen thoroughly disinfected, and the other birds returned, or better, divided up into still smaller lots, so that infection showing in one of these will not endanger the great number taken from the original infected pen. The utmost care should be taken to maintain the most perfect cleanliness in the pens of exposed and suspected geese, and to sprinkle the floors and manure liberally with an antiseptic, such as a solution of sulphuric acid in water (2:100), or of phenic acid (3:100), or of a combination of the two. This will do much to prevent the hatching of flies to act as infection-bearers, and if these can be further excluded by screens the condition will be still more satisfactory. Vermin of all kinds should be excluded and whenever possible, separate feeders and attendants should be furnished for the suspected geese, and those that have not been exposed.
NOTE ON HÆMORRHAGIC SEPTICÆMIA IN CHICKENS AND TURKEYS.
Lucet describes a septicæmia of chickens and turkeys accompanied by dysenteric discharges. The microbe resembles the bacillus gallinarum of Klein (see Vol. II, p. 254), even in the immunity of pigeons and rabbits when injected subcutem. Rabbits, however, suffer when injected intravenously. The probability is that this bacillus is identical with that of Klein. Yet in this whole class of microbes of the colon group, variations, apparently superinduced by environment, appear to result at times in a deadly pathogenesis for different genera, and epizoötics differing from each other.
DISEASES, INFECTIVE OR TOXIC, TREATED IN EARLIER VOLUMES.
Catarrh; Malignant of Cattle. Vol. I, p. 105.
— Chronic, Infective, Summer. Vol. I, p. 104.
Anæmia; Pernicious. Vol. I, p. 375.