60 The Bulletin 



Hog cholera is an acute, highly contagious disease, affecting hogs only, 

 and is characterized by a very high death rate (85 per cent); loss of appe- 

 tite, rapid emaciation or loss of flesh in those animals which do not die 

 within the first week or so of the disease, and the rapidity with which the 

 disease is spread through a neighborhood. 



The first reported outbreak of the disease in the United States was in 

 Ohio in 1833, and from that first invalfeion it has spread until there is not 

 a State or section of this country in which hogs are grown that have not 

 felt the ravages of this disease. It seems to go in epidemics, or waves, over 

 the country, and appears to usually start in the South and East, which can 

 be readily understood to be due to the milder climate and longer period of 

 warm weather. The first serious epidemic passed over this country in the 

 years of 1886-87, and the mortality reached 134 hogs out of every 1,000. For 

 the next few years the mortality subsided until in 1896-97 a second epidemic 

 gathered force and at its climax killed 144 hogs out of each 1,000 in the 

 country, or nearly 14.5 per cent of all the hogs in the United States. Follow- 

 ing this outbreak the mortality again declined, going to as low as 45 per 

 1,000, but in 1911 it again started to climb and reached 89 per 1,000 in that 

 year, and in 1913 had gone to 107 per 1,000. 



In 1913 the total number of swine in the United States was given at 61,- 

 178,000, and out of that total there were 6,738,283 hogs which died from 

 cholera. North Carolina last year had 1,335,000 hogs and lost 69,687 from 

 the disease, valued at upwards of three-quarters of a million dollars. Thus 

 we see that we are dealing with a disease which, unless controlled, will keep 

 on causing immense financial losses to the farmers who devote their efforts 

 to the raising of swine. 



The symptoms of the disease will usually develop in from five to fifteen 

 days after the animal has been exposed to the contagion, the average period 

 being about nine days. And usually the first thing the owner will notice will 

 be that the animals are not eating as they should; they will appear listless, 

 ears and tail droop, and back arched. He may at first be constipated, and 

 will probably later develop diarrhoea; there is usually a discharge from the 

 eyes which at times is profuse enough to cause the lids to gum together. His 

 skin, especially upon his abdomen from the chest to the thighs, will assume 

 a reddish discoloration, and if his temperature is taken it will be found to 

 be much higher than normal, which is from 101.5 to 102. These and other 

 manifestations will prevail for from a couple of days to as long as ten or 

 twelve days, when the animal usually succumbs. 



However if the virulence of the virus, or causative agent, is low, or if the 

 resistance of the animal is high, he may linger on for from a couple of 

 weeks to a month or more, and then it has assumed the chronic type of 

 disease. In these cases the animal will gradually wither away until he is 

 scarcely more than an animated skeleton, and it would be much better if such 

 cases were destroyed at once for it will take months of patient feeding and 

 nourishing to bring him back to thriftiness, and all the time he is sick he 

 is a constant source of danger to other animals in spreading the disease 

 about the neighborhood, or maintaining the causative agent upon the farm 

 where he is confined. 



The disease presents a train of symptoms which are far from constant, 

 and so also is the picture a sick animal presents after death. If one were 

 to be slaughtered while at the height of the disease and an examination 

 made one would first look for the reddened skin. The next portion of the 

 body to be examined would be the lymphatic glands or "kernels" of the neck, 

 and which in cholera become enlarged and reddened. After this the lungs 

 would claim attention, they showing numerous blood spots over their surface 

 which cannot be washed off with water, thus showing them to be underneath 

 the pleura covering the lungs. The stomach would next be examined, and 

 upon its inner side, in a case of cholera, we find the lining to have become 

 covered with small red spots very often. From the stomach we next look at 

 the inner side of the intestine, especially at that point where the small in- 

 testine joins the large. Here we look for the typical "button ulcer" of hog 

 cholera, and which may be in size from a pea to as large as a twenty-five- 

 cent piece, and which presents a black, raised surface above the surrounding 

 parts, and has a yellow center. These ulcers are usually found in the chronic 



