30 Veterinary Medicine. 



starvation, faulty or injudicious feeding, as exclusive feeding on 

 corn (maize), an unbalanced ration, feeding cotton seed, irregu- 

 lar feeding, etc. It may result from parasitism, as round worms 

 in the lungs, bowels, muscles, fat, kidneys or liver, from trichi- 

 nosis, from cysticerci, echinococci, or from distomatosis. These 

 not only lessen the force of constitutional and phagocytic resist- 

 ance, but they also in many cases open the way for the entrance 

 of the microbe by the wounds which they inflict. Perhaps noth- 

 ing operates more effectively in this way than the attacks of other 

 pathogenic microbes. The treatment of the domestic hog is often 

 such that it would almost appear as if it were designed to destroy 

 health and vitality. He is used to clear up the soiled and spoiled 

 provender which has been rejected by other animals. Decayed 

 vegetables and flesh of all kinds, which is no longer fit for other 

 use, is supposed to be good for him and is furnished raw. Worse 

 still, this is conveyed in barrels that are never washed, but are 

 sent for each new supply reeking with abominations which render 

 them a nuisance on the highway. It is left standing till wanted 

 in these barrels, or in still larger receptacles, which are never 

 emptied nor cleaned, but are allowed in the hottest weather, to 

 continue a hotbed of the foulest fermentations. On a smaller 

 scale the kitchen swill barrel becomes a similar centre of decom- 

 position. Even at the creamery and cheese factory the surplus 

 or waste products often remain in a common tank breeding larvae, 

 toxins and ptomaines, before they are fed to the hogs. In the 

 hog pen, or yard, corn in the ear is thrown on the ground, already 

 filthy with the solid and liquid excretions and is eaten with the 

 rotting, if not infecting, filth in which it has been rolled. From 

 grubbing in this filth with his snout, the pig plunges the latter in 

 the liquid food in his trough and too often he gets his feet into 

 the food as well, and further charges it with the injurious fer- 

 ments. Again the kitchen swill is liable to contain various in- 

 organic poisons and notably the carbonates and bicarbonates of 

 potash and soda which are used to excess in the form of powdered 

 soaps and, as shown by experiment, are deadly poisons to pigs. 



The gastro-iutestiual disorders caused by these poisons ; (it 

 may be botulism from stale or decomposing flesh, fish or fowl, the 

 poisoning by mouldy bread or musty grain, or meal, or by the 

 toxins of the many and varied saprophytic fermentations), often 



