Ti/phoid Fever in Pigs. 483 



4. — All tliesc precautions will be in vain if you do not destroy tlie 

 infectious discharges from tlic intestines of the diseased pigs. 



You may soj)arate the sick from the uninfected, but if in dry 

 weather you tm'u your healthy pigs at the end of two or three weeks 

 into the stye or tlio yard where the others had been ill, you Avill find 

 the disorder break out anew. 



And now permit me to express a hope that the Eoyal Agricultural 

 Society will take up this matter, and place the investigation in the 

 hands of my distinguished friend Professor Simonds, than whom 

 there is no man in Europe more competent to conduct such an 

 inquiry. The members of this Society have great opioortunities. 

 You know that mankind is infested, to a fearful degree, by that re- 

 markable group of disorders which are called epidemics — small-pos, 

 scarlet fever, typhoid fever, and typhus fever. Many physicians — 

 wrongly I think— have pronounced them to be inscrutable. You 

 have in animals epizootic diseases, that are the exact countcrjiarts 

 of these, analogous in their nature, propagated and destroying life in 

 the same way. But in studying these diseases in animals you 

 have the enormous advantage that all the problems which suggest 

 themselves may be put to the test of experimental investigation. 

 Y'ou know we cannot exi^eriment upon men and women as we can 

 upon jjigs and bullocks. I think this disorder among pigs is one of 

 the most interesting of the whole group ; and I believe that if it were 

 subjected, as opportunity occurs, to the test of exiDerimental inquiry, 

 results would come out that would not fail to be of the highest value 

 to the agriculturist, Avhilst they would also possess great scientific 

 interest in their bearing on kindred diseases in man, of a far higher 

 and still wider range. 



The Chairman said he had listened with very great satisfaction 

 to the observations of Dr. Budd, and added that in his neighbourhood 

 in Berkshire there had during the last few months been an immense 

 mortality among pigs. The disease was of a most extraordinary 

 character, and from ail he could learn it develoj^ed itself without any 

 premonitory symjitoms, and carried ofl' its victims quite suddenly. 



Dr. Budd believed it probable that, from the virulence of the 

 poison, the disease was sometimes mortal at so early a stage that, as 

 in the case of small-pox in man, the jiatient died without throwing 

 out the eruptions. A certain proportion of pigs might die in the 

 same way before the local disease had had time to develope itself in 

 its characteristic form. 



Professor Wilson inquii-ed how the red tinge in the cuticle about 

 the ears and those parts of the body which had little hair was to be 

 recognised in a black pig. He presumed the j)ig-dealcrs must have 

 some means of detecting it even in that case. 



Dr. Budd said the ten pigs of which he had been speaking were 

 not black, and he could not answer the question. 



Professor Simonds said that although attention had been more 

 especially directed to this disease within the last three years, there 

 could be no question that it had existed in a form unrecognised by 

 medical men for a very considerable time. It was in the early part 



