270 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



attacked, called hog cholera, but known as the swine fever, or spleenic fever 

 of swine. There was much speculation on its first appearance as to the cause 

 of the disease, and to discover a remedy for its cure, if possible, but the disease 

 runs its course so quick after fully developed, that it was hardly probable a 

 medicine could be found that would be reliable in a majority of cases, and in 

 order to 2,et rid of the plague, many herds of swine were destroyed, and other 

 infected herds strictly quarantined. It has been discovered that the disease is 

 caused like anthrax, blain, etc., in horses, cattle, and sheep, by bacteria, a 

 species of fungus plant growth, that enters into the circulation, grows, 

 increases, and thrives there (an illustration of which Prof. Beal gave), causing 

 a terrible ferment in the blood, and is largely developed in all the fluids of the 

 body ; is imparted from one animal to another by inoculation from contact, or 

 eating from the same feeding places. The treatment of diseases of so fatal a 

 form must necessarily be of an antidotal character; and it would seem reason- 

 able to suppose that from recent experiments made by Prof. James Law, of 

 Ithica, New York, and others, that this anthrax virus, or bacteridian fungus, 

 that causes the disease, could be so cultivated that its fatal effects would 

 become modified, so that the pig inoculated with this modified virus would 

 have the disease in a modified form, stripped of its fatality, and thus antidote 

 the malignity of the fatal virus, like vaccinating the virus of cow-pox in the 

 human system to antidote the small-pox. 



The experiments of Prof. Law were made through the medium of sheep and 

 rats. He would inoculate healthy sheep with the poison from the pig, and 

 then after having produced the disease in the sheep, inoculate a well pig with 

 virus taken from the sheep, which caused all the symptoms of the disease in a 

 modified form, and when slaughtered for dissection were, some of them, in a 

 convalescent stage, and no doubt would have recovered. But his experiments 

 did not go far enough, for he did not inoculate any of his subjects, after they 

 had gone through the modified disease, with virus taken from diseased swine. 

 But this will eventually be done, and I believe the hog cholera and anthrax 

 diseases of other animals can, and will, be controlled in this way. For a pre- 

 cise account of the experiments of Prof. Law, and others, on this and the 

 kindred diseases of cattle, you are referred to reports of Department of Agri- 

 culture, for years 1878-9. 



We have a more satisfactory exhibit, however, with cultivated anthrax virus, 

 by one Pasteur, a French chemist, who, with others in Europe, on account of 

 the exceeding mortality of an epizootic malady which prevails extensively in 

 that country, though but little known in this, designated as spleenic fever, 

 anthrax, carbuncular disease, and known in France as charbon, which, in its 

 most malignant form, causes death in twenty-four hours after the animal is 

 attacked. Cattle, horses, and sheep are alike subject to it. It is periodical 

 in its character, and like small-pox and other epidemic diseases, creeps along 

 insidiously, until it becomes widespread and alarming, thousands of animals 

 being swept away by the pestilence. In France it is said to be scarcely ever 

 absent, confining its attacks mostly to sheep. In view of these alarming facts, 

 eminent scientists endeavored to discover the cause and a remedy, either to 

 cure or antidote the disease. I have not time to follow the investigations of 

 Pasteur and others, as to the cause of the disease, but it was found that the 

 same, or a similar fungus to that, that causes the swine fever in this country, 

 produced this anthrax disease of Europe, among sheep and cattle. 



It had been shown by M. Pasteur, that healthy sheep inoculated with a 

 modified anthrax virus, cultivated in meat juice or chicken broth for succes- 



