A Study of Paratyphoid Bacilli Isolated from Cases of Hog-cholera

During the course of some experimental work on hog-cholera, paratyphoid bacilli were isolated from 16 per cent of the pigs. Culturally these organisms are the same as paratyphoid 18 isolated from man, while they show several differences from hog-cholera bacilli. In their slight pathogenic effect on rabbits they also differ from the hog-cholera bacillus. In their agglutination in sera produced by the injection of living cultures, one of the cultures, isolated from a chronic case, corresponds to Bacillus enteritidis, while the other five are apparently in a class by themselves. They resemble paratyphoid beta more closely than hog-cholera bacilli, but the type of clumps formed and absorption experiments show that they are different from either. Whether these differences are enough to make it necessary to put them into a class by themselves is questionable, but the fact that when injected into rabbits they produce an immunity to the hog-cholera bacillus, while paratyphoid beta does not, is additional evidence in favor of such a classification. Complement fixation experiments have been of little value in differentiating the members of this group, but on the contrary show their close relationship. It seems probable that some of the cultures that are described in the literature as hog-cholera bacilli really belong to this group, which would account for much of the confusion that exists in the classification of the interesting, truly pathogenic bacillus that at one time was thought to be the cause of hog-cholera and in the series of animals with which we have worked has not appeared once. Whether the ingestion of pork containing these bacilli would cause disease in man is a question that can only be decided by a more careful bacteriological study of the organisms causing food poisonings and paratyphoid fever.