CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 389 



complied with, and none of the animals removed from the infected yard 

 became diseased. 



Mr. Dillon, one and three-quarters miles north of Champagin, had lost 

 two pigs diseased with swine plague on Juue 10, on which day he re- 

 moved his small herd of fourteen head to a non-infected locality. No 

 other deaths had occurred when I left Champaign on July 5. 



II. TREATMENT. 



In regard to treatment no new discoveries have been made, but my 

 views, expressed in my first report, have been very much confirmed. 

 Good care, clean and uncontaniiuated food and water, strict separation 

 from diseased animals, and scrupulous cleanliness, so as to prevent the 

 animals from satisfying their vitiated appetite for excrements and urine, 

 and from introducing thereby into their organisms more and more of 

 the infectious principle, go a good ways in pre^'enting an attack of 

 swine plague from becoming very malignant and in facilitating a recov- 

 ery. Medicines seem to be of little avail — at least everything that has 

 been tried without any jirejudice has failed to produce visible good re- 

 sults. Patent nostrums and secret medicines have done more harm 

 than good. Mr. Hoyt, of Mendota, informed me that one of his neigh- 

 bors, who had extensively invested in "Eureka Specific,'' had lost in 

 proportion more hogs than anybody else in the neighborhood that had 

 not used any medicines whatever. 



If it is intended to stamp out the disease, any treatment of the sick 

 animals should be prohibited by law, unless a sufficient bond is given 

 to cover any possible damage that may result, because the treatment of 

 such a contagious or infectious disease always involves great danger in 

 so far as it tends to preserve the infectious principle and facilitates the 

 spreading of the plague. To destroy the cause, or, what is the same, 

 the infectious or contagious elements, wherever and in whatever shape 

 and form or substance it may exist, is the only rational way of dealing 

 with such diseases. Swine plague should and ought to be treated the 

 same as rinderpest or cattle plague, plenro-pneui«onia or lung jilague, 

 glanders, and farcy. The most thorough and decisive measures are in 

 the end the clieapest. 



Respectfully submitted. 



H. J. DETMEIIS, Y. S. 



Chicago, III., July 25, 1879. 



SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT. 



Sir : Immediately after you re-employed me, on the 8th of October 

 last, and instructed me to resume the investigation of swine plague, I 

 took the necessary steps to obtain reliable information as to where the 

 disease might be prevailing to such an extent as to afford suflicient 

 material for my purpose, aiul soou learned that the disease existed in 

 several counties in Illinois and Wisconsin, within a radius of two hun- 

 dred miles from Chicago. For several reasons I chose as a suitable 

 locality for my investigation the county of Henderson, in the western 

 I»art of the State of Illinois, and on the eastern bank of the Mississippi 

 River, notwithstanding sufiicient nuiterial might have been found much 

 nearer my home — for instance, in the county of La Salle. Every county 

 and every place in this State, in which swine i)lague is or has been pre 



