DISEASES OF SWINE AND OTHER ANIMALS. 361 
Numerous other experiments have been made, and quite a variety of 
medicines have been tested at different places and in different herds. 
Some of those experiments have been carried out under my personal 
superintendence, and some by the owners of the diseased animals in ac- 
cordance with my instructions. But as the results obtained with any 
one of them are far from satisfactory, it will be sufficient to mention 
only afew. The principal medicines tried were carbolic acid, bisulphite 
of soda, thymol, salicylic acid, white hellebore or veratrum album, as an 
emetic, alcohol, and sulphate of iron, and it has been found that neither 
of them possesses any special curative value. Ina few cases in which 
most of the lesions were external, applications of very much diluted 
thymol or thymic acid produced apparently good ‘results; the animals 
recovered, but might have recovered at any rate. Diluted carbolic acid 
has been used for the same purpose and with the same results. An 
emetic of white hellebore or veratrum album was given to some shoats 
(about eight or nine months old, and property of Dr. Hall, at Savoy), 
in the first stage of the disease, and seemed to have arrested the morbid 
process immediately, at least the shoats recovered. In other more de- 
veloped cases it did no good whatever. Bisulphite of soda, salicylic 
acid, and carbolic acid were used quite extensively, but no good results 
plainly due to the influence of those drugs have been observed in 
any case in which the disease had fully developed, neither by myself 
nor by others. Sulphate of iron has proved to be decidedly injurious. 
Mr. Bassetti used it quite persistently for forty-five nice shoats. Forty- 
three of them died, one recovered from a slight attack—it had external 
lesions, which were treated with carbolic acid—and one remained ex- 
empted. ‘To bleed sick hogs, in some places a customary practice among 
farmers against all ailments of swine, has had invariably the very worst 
consequences, and accelerated a fatal termination. A great many farm- 
ers in the neighborhood of Champaign haveused several kinds of “ spe- 
cifics ” and “ sure cure ” nostrums, but none of them are inclined to talk 
about the results obtained, and so it must be supposed that the latter 
have remained invisible. One case, which should have been related in 
the chapter on “ Prevention,” deserves to be mentioned. Mr. Crews had 
forty-odd hogs, of which he had lost ten or twelve, and was losing at 
the rate of two to four a day. I advised him to separate those appar- 
ently yet healthy, or but slightly affected, from the very sick ones; to 
put the former in a separate yard, not accessible to the others; to feed 
them clean food; to water them three times a day froma well, and to 
give to each animal, two or three times a day, about ten drops of car- 
bolic acid in their drinking water. He did so, and saved every one he 
separated (fourteen in number), while all others, with the exception of 
two animals which died later, died within a short time. 
Respectfully submitted. 
H. J. DETMERS, V. S. 
CHICAGO, ILL., November 15, 1878. 
