AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

The history of Pasteurella multocida (sometimes called Pasteurella septica) as a pathogen of animals dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. It has long been held responsible for the disease known as haemorrhagic septicaemia in a large variety of animals, both tame and wild. In the 1850’s, many workers in the course of their investigations found in varied sick or dead animals, an organism that is now called Pasteurella but was not known by any name at that time. These organisms, apparently pathogenic, were isolated from animals suffering from a disease of a haemorrhagic nature. Hueppe (1886) collected strains of these organisms from various sources. His study included organisms from fowl cholera, rabbit septicaemia, haemorrhagic septicaemia of cattle, including wild deer, wild boar and swine plague. He was endeavouring to show that this organism was a soil bacterium, similar in behaviour in respect to infectivity, to the anthrax bacillus. In this he was not too successful, although there are still some workers in Europe today who hold tentatively to this view. What Hueppe did show was a relationship of the organisms isolated from various sources to one another.[...]