52 DISEASES OF SWINE AND OTHER ANIMALS. 



with blood ; spleen enlarged, and large numbers of tubercle-like excres- 

 cences on its lower surface ; caecum and colon full of hardened feces ; a 

 few ulcerous tumors in caecum, and two large decaying morbid growths 

 in colon ; mesenteric glands enlarged ; other organs healthy. 



Numerous other experiments have been made, and quite a variety of 

 medicines have been tested at dilierent places and in different herds. 

 Some of those experiments have been carried out under my personal 

 sux)erintendence, and some by the owners of the diseased animals in ac- 

 cordance with my instructions. But as the residts obtained with any 

 one of them are far fioui satisfactory, it will be sufficient to mention 

 only a few. The i)rincipal medicines tried were carboUc acid, bisulphite 

 of soda, thymol, salicylic acid, white hellebore or vcratrwn alhitm, as an 

 emetic, alcohol, and suli^hate of iron, and it has been found that neither 

 of them x)ossesses any special curative value. In a few cases in which 

 most of the lesions were external, apphcations of very much diluted 

 thymol or thymic acid produced apparently good results ; the animals 

 recovered, but might have recovered at any rate. Diluted carbohc acid 

 has been used for the same purpose and with the same results. An 

 emetic of white hellebore or veratrum album was given to some shoats 

 (about eight or nine months old, and i^roperty of Dr. Hall, at Savoy)t, 

 in the first stage of the disease, and seemed to have arrested the morbid 

 process immediately, at least the shoats recovered. In other more de- 

 veloped cases it did no good whatever. Bisulphite of soda, salicylic 

 acid, and carbolic acid were used quite extensively, but no good results 

 plainly due to the influence of those drugs have been observed in 

 any case in which the disease had fully developed, neither by myself 

 nor by others. Sulphate of iron has proved to be decidedly injurious. 

 Mr. Bassett used it quite persistently for forty-five nice shoats. Forty- 

 three of them died, one recovered from a sUght attack — it had external 

 lesions, which were treated with carbohc acid — and one remained ex- 

 empted. To bleed sick hogs, in some places a customary practice among 

 farmers against all aihnents of swine, has had invariably the very worst 

 consequences, and accelerated a fatal termination. A great many farm- 

 ers in the neighborhood of GhampaigTi have used several kinds of " spe- 

 cifics " and " sure cure " nostrums, but none of them are inchned to talk 

 about the results obtained, and so it must be supposed that the latter 

 have remained invisible. One case, which should have been related in 

 the chapter on " Prevention," deserves to be mentioned. Mr. Crews had 

 forty-odd hogs, of w^hich he had lost ten or twelve, and was losing at 

 the rate of two to four a day. I advised him to separate those appar- 

 ently yet healthy, or but slightly affected, from the very sick ones ; to 

 jnit the former in a separate yard, not accessible to the others ; to feed 

 them clean food ; to water them three times a day from a weU, and to 

 give to each animal, two or three times a day, about ten drops of car- 

 bolic acid in their drinking water. He did so, and saved every one he 

 separated (fourteen in niunber), while aU others, with the exception of 

 two animals which died later, died within a short time. 



Bespectfully submitted. 



H. J. DETMEES, V. S. 



Chicago, III., November 15, 1878. 



