260
ABSTRACTS
A combination of the following symptoms characterised the clinical disease :—fever
anorexia, restlessness, lameness, lateral deflection of the head, staggering, prostration
excitability, coma and death.
Centrally located polynuclear foci, monocytic perivascular and meningeal infiltration
in the medulla oblongata and slight parenchymatous and fatty changes in the liver were
the chief histological changes noticed. Groups of Listerella-like organisms were seen in the
polynuclear foci of the medulla of two cases.
The organism to which the author ascribes a causal significance was cultured from the
medulla of two cases. It is a Gram-positive non-spore-forming rod with rounded ends,
measuring 1.7 × 0.7µ in average. It is sluggishly motile. On liver agar slants, colonies
measure 1 to 3 mm. in diameter, are smooth and low-convex, have entire margins and are of
a milky bluish colour. It is negative for the indol, hydrogen sulphide, Voges-Proskauer
and nitrate reduction tests. It is methyl-red positive. Litmus-milk is reduced but
gelatine broth is not liquefied. In a base of extract broth, acid, but no gas, is formed from
the following sugars:—glucose, laevulose, maltose, mannose, and salicin. Delayed
fermentation occurred in arabinose, galactose, glycerol, lactose, mannitol, raffinose, rham-
nose, sorbitol, sucrose, trehalose and xylose. Dulcitol and inulin are not attacked.
The strains isolated from this outbreak, excepting certain minor differences in fer-
mentation reactions, were found to be indistinguishable from the Princeton and New
Haven strains of Listerella by cultural, agglutination and agglutination-absorption tests.
Intranasal injections of brain suspensions and of small doses of culture in mice repro.
duced, after an incubation period of about two weeks, disturbances similar to those observ-
ed in sheep. Larger doses of culture produced meningitis and rapidly fatal septicaemia.
Mice inoculated intravenously died within twenty-four hours. Suspension of culture
which had been maintained on laboratory media was pathogenic to a rabbit injected in-
tranasally. Sheep infected by intranasal and conjunctival application of culture showed
a marked thermal and agglutinative response, but recovered : a similar but milder reaction
was observed in a control animal kept in the same pen. Intracarotid injection in sheep
caused death from haemorrhagic meningitis within forty-eight hours. [V. R. R.]
Dicalcium phosphate and steamed bone flour as supplements for a phosphorus
deficient ration. W. GODDEN RAY and S. C. RAY. (The Emp. J. of Exptl. Agri.,
Vol. VI, No. 21, 1938, pp. 79-84.)
EXPERIMENTS were carried out with sheep with the object of determining the actual
utilisation of phosphorus in the forms of dicalcium phosphate and steamed bone flour
when used as phosphatic supplements to a basal ration markedly deficient in phosphorus.
Four Oxford cross wethers were used for the experiment and the ration consisted of
chopped oat straw, dried beet pulp, starch and blood meal which had a P 2 O 5 content
of about 0.14 per cent. The experimental work was divided into four periods when (a)
Basal ration, (b) Basal ration plus dicalcium phosphate, (c) Basal ration and (d) Basal
ration plus steamed bone flour was provided to the animals.
Blood samples were analysed at regular intervals and the data were indicative of
the periods when animals were showing marked signs of phosphorus deficiency or, alter -
natively, had responded to the use of phosphatic supplements.