190
Contagious Pleuro-Pneumonia of Goats
the bovine, for which the generic name Borrelomyces has been suggested by-
Turner (op. cit).
(2) In sections of muscular tissue affected with local oedema, fixed in
formol-saline and stained with haematoxylin and eosin, minute bodies mostly
coccoid were detectable. It was presumed that this was an artifact, probably a
precipitate from the stain employed. Subsequent work, with control sections
of healthy muscle, and every care in respect of the dyes used, has fully con-
firmed that there are such bodies regularly present in all but advanced muscle
lesions, occupying the oedematous spaces, and in enormous numbers.
According to Hutyra and Marek (op. cit.) Schellhase has recorded the
presence of coccoid bodies in smears from the lung lesions. While we have
observed granules in such smears, then specificity could never be decided.
Intra-leucocytic streptococcoidal forms as described by Mori, have not been
observed.
In sections stained with haematoxylin and eosin the organism is not
usually well defined, and it is not demonstrable with gram. It stains well,
however, with the Romanowsky dyes, best with carbolthionin. The average
size of the coccoidal forms in stained preparations, estimated by comparison
with staphylococci superimposed from culture over sections (Plate XI,
fig. 2) is 0.3—0.6 µ, but variants as to size from the extreme limit of visi-
bility up to about 0.8 µ are observable.
Attempts to demonstrate the organism in the pulmonary lesions were
inconclusive until the facility of the experimentally induced pneumonia was
available. This permitted the examination of very early and oedematous
lesions, without the complication of leucocytic and tissue reactions, and it
has been demonstrated that bodies indistinguishable from those present in
the muscle lesions, and with a similar type of distribution—lying free in
enormous numbers in the oedematous fluid in both the vesicles and septa—
are present in the lung lesions also (Plate XI, figs. 3, 4 and 5). As already
stated, the organism is sometimes present in the bronchi, both on the surface
of the mucosa and within the lumen.
(3) At the earliest opportunity effusions, both local, pleuritic, and pul-
monary, were examined with dark-ground illumination. In all fields innu-
merable coccoid bodies were present, and predominated, but there were
numerous, extremely pleomorphic forms also present, all in active Brownian
movement. It has only rarely been possible to observe variants through the
sequence of their changes, and with these exceptions, only a description of
the morphology of the forms that have been observed can be given. Their
inter-relationship must await further study. The technique employed has
been similar to that described by Turner.
The material used in the photomicrographs has been the clear ' sterile '
fluid obtainable after separation of the clot from clear pleuritic effusion, or
the effusion exuding from sterile portions of lung placed in a sterile con-
tainer.
Slides and coverslips must be singularly clean. For visual observation,
a moderately thick preparation is best, as the movements of the organism
permit a sterioscopic perspective of their structure. But for photomicro-
graphy, with the apparatus available, the organism had to be perfectly
stationary.* This is a state difficult to achieve, and repeated failure was
* A heliostat as the source of light, employed by Pyjper (1938) in his dark-ground study
of agglutination, would be ideal for the purpose, and would yield very rich data.