204 STUDIES ON SALMONELLA GALLINARUM [Vol. XXII, Part III,
and acute arthritis of wing and limb joints. Both white and black rats were resis-
tant. A mortality of 50 per cent was observed in adult fowls when infected by
intra-muscular route, birds succumbing from 7 to 11 days. Three healthy bird
kept successively in the same cage where previously sick birds had been confined
became sero-positive in 11 to 15 days but the infection was sub-clinical. 18 hour
broth culture of the organism in dilution corresponding to Brown's standard opacity
tube 1, in 0.1 c.c. dose subcutaneously, proved cent per cent fatal in 3 to 5 days, to
six one day old baby chicks. Oral dosing of the culture suspension in 0.5 c.c. dose
was equally fatal in 5 to 8 days, in a day-old chick, with two survivors among
the ten birds infected, which also became sero-positive after eleven days. Three
incontact chicks with the above lot died of the disease in 7 to 10 days, organisms
being recovered from-them.
Oral dosing of the culture suspension described above, along with a 16 per cent
sodium solution of sulphamezathine in drinking water at 0.2 per cent level of the
active drug for one week in a lot of 20 day-old chicks failed to prevent mortality.
16 died within a week and two of the rest were sero-positive. Organism was re-
covered from all the dead chicks.
Morphology. The strain of the organism isolated from the adults produced
typical disease in chicks and vice-verse.
The two strains were identical as regards their behaviour on routine laboratory
media. They exhibited the following characters :—
Slender gram negative, non-motile rods with rounded ends.
Cultural characters:—
Agar colonies :—Moist greyish circular, entire, and dome shaped.
Agar slant:—Thin grey streak, moist with irregular margin.
Broth :—Turbid with heavy flocculent sediment.
Biochemistry. Litmus milk was rendered alkaline. V. P., M. R. and Indole
tests were negative. Hydrogen sulphide was not formed. Carbohydrate fermen-
tation reactions were put up with peptone water as a base and Andrades indicator
to determine acid production as suggested by Bergey [1948].
The following sugars were fermented within 48 hours without gas production
by both the adult and chick organisms :—glucose, mannite, maltose, dextrin, dulcite,
mannose, laevulose, xylose, raffinose, rhamnose, arabinose, and galactose, except
xylose which took 96 hours, and no changes were observed subsequently up to 14
days. Lactose, sucrose, glycerol, salicin, sorbitol, adonitol and inositol were not
fermented. Six months later the tests were repeated and gave the same identical
results.
Serology. The organism from the adult bird No. 399 was tested by the slow-
tube method against homologous serum collected from strongly reacting birds and
the titres were found to be as high as 1 to 12,000. Among the chronic cases there
were a small percentage of birds four months after the outbreak with end titres
as low as 1 to 20, 1 to 40, and 1 to 80. Acute and subacute cases of the disease died
before agglutinins could be demonstrated. Under experimental conditions agglu-
tinins could only be perceived usually on the eleventh day in birds that were given
killed-cultures for antiserum preparation.