An infection of the respiratory tract in cats, variously called nasal catarrh, influenza or distemper, has been frequently observed in the Northeastern states. The main characteristics of this disease are sneezing, coughing and mucopurulent discharge from the eyes and nose. Although pneumonia usually cannot be demonstrated during life, necropsies often reveal grayish, densely consolidated areas in the anterior lobes. The disease is rarely fatal. The acute symptoms seldom persist for more than one or two weeks, although the debilitating after-effects usually last for over a month.
This pneumonic infection has been recently studied in detail by Baker1 of the Department of Animal Pathology, Rockefeller Institute. Isolation of the causative agent was accomplished as follows: A 10 per cent emulsion of pneumonic tissues was prepared from sick cats, centrifuged for five minutes at 1,200 revolutions per minute and 0.05 cc. of the resulting supernatant fluid inoculated intranasally under light ether