DISEASES OF SWINE AND OTHER ANIMALS. 425 
tion of intestine from same animal shows a healthy condition. These 
three sections are transmitted with this report for verification. (See 
microscopic sections, Plate XV, Figs. 1, 2, and 3.) 
The contents of the stomach and intestines were liquid in six cases, 
and dry, hard, and very dark colored in all others. 
‘The gall-bladder usually contained a small quantity of thin, greenish 
fluid. 
The trachea and bronchial tubes contained a large quantity of matter 
apparently consisting of mucus and broken-down epithelium. 
DIAGNOSIS OF THE DISEASE. 
Judging from the visible causes that appear most active in its develop- 
ment—the symptoms and pathology of the disease—we feel warranted 
in pronouncing it, in its milder manifestations, bronchial catarrh, and, in 
its most active and fatal form, catarrhal pneumonia. 
There is no symptom uniformly present in the disease, as we have 
observed it, that bears any analogy to the symptoms of cholera as affect- 
ing the human subject, and the term ‘“hog-cholera” is therefore a mis- 
nomer; and although there is, ordinarily, little or nothing in a name, 
in this instance the misnaming of the disease has been a source of incal- 
culable loss, by suggesting a line of treatment irrationally administered 
and calculated to aggravate rather than cure it. 
ITS CAUSE. 
It is when seeking the cause of this wide-spread epidemic disease that 
the field of investigation takes widest range. As already stated, it pre- 
vails more or less at ali seasons of the year, and under almost every con- 
ceivable condition and combination of conditions as to soil, food, water, 
locality, and general management; but the difference in its prevalence 
under certain circumstances is so marked and uniform that from these 
facts we may derive some definite information as to the causes most active 
in development. 
The past history of the disease would indicate that it originated in this 
country at a time when the condition of swine was visibly altered from 
a comparative state of nature to one of more perfect domestication. 
When the country was new, affording almost unlimited range, the hogs 
bred, grew up, and roamed in the forest until maturity. Being allowed 
the free use of their noses, and being omnivorous in nature, they fed on 
worms, roots, mast, and such other food as was provided and given them 
by their owners; they exercised as their inclination or necessities in- 
clined them; had free access to numerous springs and streams of run- 
ning water; slept in storm-sheltered thickets ‘on beds of clean leaves, 
and enjoyed under these circumstances a vigor of constitution and an 
immunity from disease unknown to the modern swine-breeders of the 
country. As the country became more densely populated, rendering it 
necessary to clear up and inclose the land for agricultural purposes, the 
jank, active, long-nosed animal of the pioneer age began to disappear 
in order to give place to a new and: more advanced civilization in the 
history of his race. A close business calculation demonstrated that a 
hog fed to profit on food produced by manual labor must have an inbred 
tendency to take on flesh, and that tendency encouraged by ciose con- 
finement and high feeding. 
The hog of to-day is the result of persistent in-breeding for an obese 
habit, encouraged by want of exercise and over-feeding. An animal 
