358 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 
dies, such as are advertised in column advertisements in certain news- 
papers, and warranted to be infallible, or to cure every case, can do no 
good whatever. They are a downright fraud, and serve only to draw 
the money out of the pockets of the despairing farmer, who is ready to 
catch at any straw. Wo cure has ever been found for glanders, anthrax, 
and cattle-plague, diseases that have been known for more than two 
thousand years, and that have been investigated again and again by 
the most learned veterinarians and the best practitioners of Hurope, ~ 
and yet there is to-day not even a prospect that a treatment will ever be 
discovered to which those diseases, once fully developed, will yield. 
Neither is there any prospect or probability that fully developed swine- 
plague will ever yield to treatment. It is true that the bacilli suis and 
their germs can be killed or destroyed if outside of the animal organism, 
or within reach on the surface of the animal’s body. Almost any known 
disinfectant—carbolic acid, thymic acid, chloride of lime, creosote, and 
a great many others—will destroy them. But the bacilli and their germs 
are not on the surface of the body, except in such parts of the skin and 
accessible mucous membranes (conjunctiva and gums) that may happen 
to have become affected by the morbid process. They are inside of the. 
‘organism, and not only in every part and tissue morbidly affected, in 
every morbid product, and in every lymphatic gland, but they are also in 
every drop of blood and in every particle of a drop of blood circulating 
in the whole organism. Who, I would like to ask, will have the audacity 
to assert that he is able to destroy those baciilt and their germs without 
disturbing the economy of the animal organism to such an extent as to 
cause the immediate death of the animal? But even if means should 
be found by which these bacilli and their germs can be destroyed with- 
out serious injury to the animal, a destruction of the same will not be 
sufficient to effect a eure. Important morbid changes must be repaired; 
extensive embolism is existing in some very vital organs; a rapid, pro- 
liferous growth of morbid cells has set in; some of the intestines (ce- 
cum and colon) may have become perforated; exudations have been 
deposited in the lungs, in the thoracic cavity, in the pericardium, and in 
the abdominal cavity; the heart itself may have been morbidly changed, 
and every lymphatic gland in the whole organism become diseased. 
How, I would like to know, will those quacks who advertise their “Sure 
Cure” and their high-sounding “ Specifies” to swindle the farmer’ out of 
his hard-earned dollars and cents—how, I ask, will those quacks restore, 
repair, stop, and reduce all those morbid changes? 
Still, I do not wish to say that a rational treatment can do no good; 
on the contrary, it may in many cases avert the worst and most fatal 
merbid changes, and may thereby aid nature considerably in effecting 
a recovery in all those eases in which the disease presents itself in a mild 
form, and in which very dangerous or irreparable morbid changes have 
not yet taken place. A good dieteticat treatment, however, including a 
strict observation of sanitary principles, is of much more importance 
than the use of medicines. In the first place, the sick animals, if possi- 
ble, should be kept one by one-in separate pens. The latter, if mov- 
able—movable ones, perhaps six to eight feet square and without a 
floor, are preferable—ought to be moved once a day, at noon, or after the 
dew has disappeared from the grass; if the pens are not movable, they 
must be kept serupulously clean, because a pig affected with swine- 
plague has a vitiated appetite, and eats its own excrements and those 
of others, and, as those excrements contain innumerable hacillt and their 
germs, will add thereby fuel to the flame; in other words, will increase 
