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DISEASES OF SWINE AND OTHER ANIMALS. 423 
River Valley the disease has prevailed during the present season to 
much less extent than for several years past. This is due in part to the 
- fact that there are not so many hogs here as formerly—great loss having 
greatly discouraged hog-raising, a branch of agricultural industry here-' 
tofore paramount to every other interest. 
The less prevalence of the disease is also due in part to the increased 
facilities for selling to summer packers; the approach of the complaint 
in ay even locality being the signal for the selling of every marketable 
animal. 
In these hog-growing districts, the surface of the country is quite flat, 
affording very imperfect natural drainage, and as a consequence much 
_ stagnant water prevails. The soil is a mixture of clay and sand. The 
food is mainly corn, with some clover during the summer months, the 
animals. often subsisting upon corn alone from the time of birth to that 
of slaughter. ; 
In the county of Bartholomew there are several “grease factories,” 
where they render dead animals, and it is estimated that during the 
year 1876 there were rendered at these several factories no less than one 
hundred thousand animals that died of the disease in that and adja- 
cent counties. 
It is the concurrent testimony of the leading and most intelligent ob- 
servers, whose experience and observation have been most extensive, 
that while the disorder prevails more or less at all seasons of the year, 
it prevails to the greatest extent and with most fatal effect during the 
dry months of the fall season, and again during the last winter and first 
months of spring—February and March. 
SYMPTOMS OF THE DISEASE. 
A greater degree of uniformity was found to exist in the symptoms 
and character of the disease than was anticipated at the beginning of 
the investigation. The first symptoms that usually attract the atten- 
tion of the farmer, indicating approaching disease, is a wheezing cough, 
coupled with a disposition to mope. During this period the animal 
stands about as if in a “brown study,” with its ears dropped and its 
eyes inclined to water or matter. 
Following in the usual succession of symptoms comes a failure in the 
appetite, with occasional vomiting and diarrhea, although the two last- 
named symptoms constitute an exception, to which constipation is the 
rule. 
A complete failure in the appetite, intense thirst, with increased tem- 
perature of the body, indicates the supervention of the febrile and in- 
flammatory stage of the disease. During this stage the temperature 
not infrequently rises as high as 107° F., as indicated by the introduc- 
_ tion of the thermometer into the rectum of the animal. The cough in- 
creases; the breathing becomes more accelerated and laborious; the 
respiratory movements are scarcely observable in the walls of the chest, 
but become conspicuous at the flank, and range from 30 to 60 inspira- 
tions to the minute; the arterial circulation is increased in frequency 
and diminished in volume. Petechial eruption is often observed on the 
skin and is most distinetly observable on white animals. This is due to 
extravasated blood from the capillaries into the tissues, which, on under- 
going decomposition, produces ulceration of the skin in the future 
course of the disease, particularly if the animal becomes convalescent. 
In the last stage the animal becomes very weak; staggers in gait, if 
able to rise at all; refuses both food and drink; falls in temperature ~ 
