Typhoid Fever in Pigs. 473 



conception I have formed of tliis particular disorclcr is that it is 

 of a typhoid character. Most of you, no doubt, are sufficiently familiar 

 ■with the disease called typhoid fever, and sometimes gastric fever, in 

 man. That disease is attended and characterised by a peculiar 

 ulceration of the intestinal follicles. So with the disease in the pig : 

 it, too, is a typhoid fever, characterised and attended by a peculiar 

 series of ulcerations of the intestine, v/hich are in some respects the 

 very counterpart of the ulcerations found in the human intestine, so 

 that the two may be considered exact pathological equivalents ; the 

 differences betvv-een them, more especially as touching the order of 

 their distribution, are, however, too serious to allow us to suppose 

 that they are the common effect of a single specific poison. My idea 

 is that the two maladies are not identical, or not interchangeable ; that 

 is to say, that the typhoid fever of the pig is not communicable to man, 

 nor that of man to the pig. The pig-fever stands towards the typhoid 

 fever in man in just the same sort of relation that small-pox in sheep 

 stands to human small-pox. My first acquaintance wdth the disorder 

 I owe to Professor John Gamgec, of the Veterinary College, Edinburgh. 

 In August last he wrote me a short note to say that a very remarkable 

 ivnd fatal outbreak of true typhoid fever had occurred among pigs in 

 Edinburgh ; that the disease had been attended by ulcerations of the 

 intestinal canal, the precise coxxnterpart of those attendant on fever in 

 man ; that the disorder had been imported into Edinburgh by stock 

 from Wolverhampton, but had been extinguished by measures which, 

 as I gathered from his note, had been directed against contagion. 

 He closed his note by offering to send me specimens, or a v.'hole pig, if 

 I desired it. Eeeling that it was a case in which, if in any, it was 

 advisable to " go the whole hog," I telegraphed to him to send me a 

 pig entire. The weather was very hot at the time, so that Vhen the 

 pig, which was desj)atched in accordance with this request, reached 

 me, it was in an advanced stage of decomposition. That, however, 

 did not prevent me from examining it and ascertaining that the colon 

 was beset by numerous ulcers. 



I heard nothing more of the malady for sis or eight months, when 

 a, friend of mine, a medical practitioner in the neighbourhood of 

 Bristol, wrote me to say that the pigs in Clifton Yv^orkhousc Avere 

 iill dying of intestinal fever; that out of a lot of ten pigs which 

 had taken the disorder, six had died, and the remaining four were not 

 likely to recover. Next day I went over to see the patients, and had 

 an opportunity — the only one I have had — of observing the disease 

 in the living subject. I saw them from day to day until they died ; 

 and I could not give you a better idea of what I saw than by saying 

 that the disease is the exact counterpart of typhoid fever in man, though 

 more rapid and more deadly ; but in other respects singularly like. 



I will say a word or two on the history of these ten pigs. They 

 had been purchased in Bristol market about a week before the first 

 symptoms showed themselves, and when brought to the workhouse 

 they aj^peared to be in perfect health. In the course of four or five 

 days one or two of them began to droop and exhibit signs of illness. 

 The earliest death occurred on the fourth day after the first symptoms 



