EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VIII 453 



cholera in a single year in the United States. Furthermore, they insist 

 that for the last forty years the annual los^s from this source has 

 averaged not less than $30,000,000! Truly an appalling record. 



CHOLERA INCURABLE 



There is no cure for cholera. Once a pig falls a victim to the disease 

 it is "good-night" for that particular pig. Only an occasional animal 

 blessed with extraordinarily resistant powers recovers a measure of 

 health after a long-drawn-out period of convalescence to other animals. 

 An owner would be better off in the end if every animal attacked would 

 shuffle off promptly, instead of hanging around for weeks as is some- 

 times the case. 



The secret of cholera control, and a possible sometime eradication, 

 lies in good care, sanitation and preventive measures, the most im- 

 portant of which is vaccination. Every swine grower in the country 

 can do his bit here — if he will. It is the lack of cooperation on the part 

 of so many growers that has enabled the cholera germ to remain so 

 numerously and continuously on the job. Apathy, ignorance and criminal 

 carelessness — especially the last-named — still exist in regard to hog 

 cholera. 



CONDITIONS GREATLY IMPBO\'ED 



However, the "world do move," deliberately, it is true, but irresistibly, 

 for all that. Conditions are improving. Horse sense is slowly but 

 surely crowding ignorance off the map. The agricultural colleges and 

 universities are doing good work, unselfish work, the fruits of which will 

 be conspicuo'us when the younger generation of farmers take over the 

 harness and we older heads of "sot" ways and rusty ideals step aside. 

 Veterinary workers in many states are getting a grip on the situation, 

 and the time will come when losses from hog cholera will be reduced 

 to a negligible quantity. 



It calls for no particular strain upon the mental powers to recall 

 the deplorable condition that prevailed here in the Middle West back 

 in the "seventies" and the "eighties." Cholera was rampant. It swept 

 the Corn Belt states like a widespread tornado. The plagues that 

 were visited upon one Pharoah of old must have been tame affairs in 

 comparison. Farms and feedlots were swept clean of porcine life. 

 Tlhousands of carcasses rotted in the open, unburned and unburied. 

 Quacks and conscienceless peddlers of "cures" reaped a fat harvest 

 from distracted owners. There was a total lack of legal restrictions 

 for the disposal of dead animals, and nothing whatever was attempted 

 to stay the ravages of the disease. The popular supposition was that 

 nothing could be done and so nothing was done. 



AN OLIHTIME PLAGUE SPOT 



The writer remembers a certain rendering plant established near his 

 home town for the purpose of saving the grease from the cholera- 

 stricken hogs. The site, which was convenient to the highway, was in 

 the woods beneath a low' bluff and but a few yards from the river. It 

 was a crude makeshift sort of affair, but the proprietor did a thriving 



