HOG CHOLERA AND SERUM 89 



campaign against this scourge in which not only breeders and farmers, 

 but state and national authorities themselves shall join, fighting continu- 

 ously and persistenly with the end in view that in, say ten years, our 

 entire country may be declared practically cholera free. 



The financial losses sustained through the loss of pork hogs alone ia, 

 however, only one phase of the proposition. 



The progressive, business farmer no longer follows the practice of 

 looking for his annual profits through the sale of grain crops. Bather 

 he looks for his gain through the raising and sale of live stock. He needs 

 the manure to maintain the fertility of his soil, and he is appreciative 

 of the fact that a bushel of corn that sells for fifty cents on the market, 

 will bring him one dollar when disposed of in the form of pork. 



Further this same farmer realizes, or is beginning to realize, the 

 greater returns to be gained from the breeding and raising of pure-bred 

 stock, and he is constantly endeavoring to improve his herds by the 

 introduction of pure-bred, registered animals. 



Yet it matters little how successful one may become as a breeder 

 of improved hogs, or in the building up of his herd, as a feeder if he 

 is to be at the mercy of hog cholera epidemics, and is constantly con- 

 fronted by a condition that may in the space of a few days wipe out 

 his entire herd, destroy utterly the results of years of work and study 

 in selective breeding, and with it all inflict upon him a loss that in many 

 cases reaches into the thousands of dollars. 



Concerted Action. Even a casual consideration of the facts given 

 above will show the absolute necessity of some definite, effective, concerted 

 action which can and will stay the ravages of this disease and work to 

 its final elimination. And particularly is this so when there is no longer 

 any question that the trouble can be controlled. 



Up until within the past few years hog cholera has been one of the 

 stubborn diseases to respond to treatment. Although the whole pharma- 

 copeia has been searched for a specific cure, no such cure has ever been 

 discovered. Many so-called remedies have been boasted and boosted, but 

 not one of them has ever proved efiieacious when an emergency arose. 

 Even proper feeding, proper housing and sanitary surroundings, though 

 essential in maintaining animals in a healthy condition and rendering 

 them more able to fight disease, have not proved a safeguard against 

 cholera infection. And on the contrary, it might be added, that there ia 

 no condition or set of conditions, even improper care and feeding of 

 hogs, that will bring on cholera infection without the presence of the living 

 cholera germ. 



A Contagious Disease. Hog cholera is characteristically a contagious 

 disease and is caused by a living germ that develops and multiplies in 

 the body of the animal and produces a poison fatal to life. Even though 

 scientists have thus far, because of inadequate equipment, been unable to 

 identify the particular bug that causes the havoc, the proof of its ex- 

 istence lies in the fact that if a few drops of blood from a cholera infected 

 hog be injected into the system of one not so infected, the blood of the 

 latter animal will become as thoroughly impregnated with cholera virus 

 as was that of the former. This condition, however, would not and could 

 not obtain if the blood of the original animal did not contain a living, 

 active organism. An inactive or dead foreign substance injected into the 

 blood of the second hog could not multiply or increase in quantity. 



The discovery in this instance, as in the cases of all contagious or 

 infectious diseases, of the origin or cause of the disease marked the 

 first steps toward the prevention and control of hog cholera, and thanks 

 to the investigations and activities of our Department of Agriculture and 

 our Experimental Stations, we have, I am firmly convinced, an absolute 

 method of preventing the disease and of bringing about its complete 

 eradication. In my mind it is no longer a question of how to prevent 

 hog cholera, but rather is it one of how to provide the proper means under 

 efficient supervision and regulation, and then to get the farmers to use 

 them. 



