FOOT & MOUTH DISEASE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4751, 15 September 1924, Page 4

FOOT & MOUTH DISEASE.

DISCOVERY OF ORGANISM. SUCCESS OF EXPERIMENTS The Veterinary Record, official organ of the profession in Britain is disposed to accept the recently reported discovery of the foot and mouth disease (says the Live Stock Journal of London). I here seems, the Record states in a leading article, to be little doubt that the causal organism has been found, cultivated on artificial media, and reproduced by inoculation of healthy annuals, and the experiments continued successfully through many sub-cul-tures. A generation ago Paul Frosch was working on this problem with Loeffler, and the opinion was formed that the disease was due to a filtrable virus. This was embodied in the report of the commission for investigation of foot-and-mouth disease in Berlin in 1899. Since that time Frosch has been continuously working on the subject in the face of great obstacles, not the least of which was finance, for an investigation of this nature occupying many years is one of great cost. Now, after a quarter of a century, his work has been crowned with success, and It will stand for all time as a monument of a patient and persisting effort and concentrating on the solution of a very difficult problem. From the information at disposal, the article continues, it would appear that the organism was first identified in minute colonies on artificial, solid media, each colony being about the size of a red blood corpuscle. The organism itself is only 0.1 microns long, and was demonstrated by photographic It is proposed to name this minute bacillus Loeffleria nevcrmanni. Professor Dahmer has made cultures through twenty-five successive generations, and then reinoculated a cow, and from the vesicles which formed has caused typical foot-and-mouth iu a second cow. One of the difficulties to be contended with arose from the fact that the fluid in the vesicles of the disease was extremely infective on the first day and less so on the second, and might be harmless on the third. It was necessary to find and remove the agent which caused this diminution of infectivity or was destructive of the infecting virus. Apparently Fosch made use of the Collodion filter, but the methodisnot stated, and details will be awaited with interest. One understands that this report is a preliminary one made to the Micro-biological Society of Berlin, but Frosch and Dahmer have submitted their work to the Department of Health and to the Koch Jnstitute for thorough investigation, and confirmation,and it seems likely to be confirmed by other workers in research. The British Ministry of Agriculture has sent Captian Daubney to Berlin with the object of obtaining all the information possible.