DISEASES OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 3I 



that kind I will talk to you upon some of the causes of disease, 

 and try to throw out a few hints that may prevent you from hav- 

 ing disease among your flocks and your herds. 



\\t shall have to take up a little bit of the veterinarian's life, 

 and you will pardon me if I take up a little of my own experi- 

 ence. I have been a practicing veterinarian for something over 

 thirtv years. When anyone asks me today if I am practicing 

 I answer, yes and no. Through the press and by correspondence 

 advice is being given all over the country, from ]\Iaine to Texas 

 and from Oregon to Florida. It is really a line of practice. I 

 have a large amount of correspondence with men who are seek- 

 ing advice for the treatment of their animals. As I look back 

 upon it I find just this condition: sixty per cent of all the dis- 

 eases upon the farms of the United States occur simply because 

 the owner of that animal did not understand the proper manner 

 of feeding him, did not study what was the proper food for the 

 animal. That seems like a large statement, but if there is a 

 physician in this audience I think he will almost bear me out in 

 saying that sixty per cent of the diseases with which he has to 

 contend today occur because the person was not properly fed. I 

 want to say just a word on that. Do you know how we are 

 looked upon today by people on the other side of the Atlantic 

 ocean? When the great World Congress was held in Paris, 

 some of our physicians reported that people over there would say 

 to them, ''You are nothing but a race of dyspeptics." There is 

 a great deal of truth in that. The fact is that in this God-blessed 

 land, this United States of America, we have so many of God's 

 blessings that we are eating ourselves to death ; so much to eat 

 that we abuse the privilege. Go down to your drug store and 

 ask the druggist what he sells the most of. He will answer, 

 dyspeptic tablets or other medicines for dyspepsia. 



In regard to the animals, as I have said, sixty per cent of the 

 diseases upon which we are called to give advice arise from the 

 fact that the animal was not properly fed from infancy up to 

 maturity. It has grown up a dyspeptic in many instances, or it 

 has grown up with a weakened vitality that makes it subject to 

 disease. When we find a horse that is peculiarly subject to colic, 

 and about every time a little change of food is made, or there is 

 a change of atmosphere he has an attack, it has been my experi- 

 ence to find that his destinv was fixed during the first winter of 



