DISEASES OF BWINE AND OTHER ANIMALS. 117 



qiiite comely in shape, early in maturity, of strongiy-developed fattening 

 tendencies, and of enfeebled constitution, is the intelligent and natural 

 result. An animal thus deprived in part of the constitutional vigor of 

 its ancestors, forced to give in part the instinctive habits of its race in 

 obedience to the regulations of modern farming, must necessarily have 

 acquired a diseased tendency. If, under these circumstances in the era 

 of modern swine-breeding, the animal is more exposed to causes produc- 

 ing disease, a general prevalence of disease must be the result. Do 

 such causes generally prevail, which, operating upon well-known prin- 

 ciples in anunal physiology, are calculated to produce the disease as we 

 have observed it ? If not, we are forced, in the absence of visible and 

 rational causes, to indulge in hypothesis, and seek some hidden poison 

 which, operating to produce the disease, may, therefore, propagate it by 

 contagion. 



We have assumed that the animal of the present period is one of 

 impaked constitution, and that its habits, as imposed by the will of the 

 farmer, as to food, water, cleanliness, exercise, and rest, do not approach 

 so nearly a strict observance of the laws of health as do the instinctive 

 habits of the animal in an unrestrained state of nature. The habits in 

 the latter state have been briefly alluded to already. What are the 

 altered conditions that conflict with the laws of health as imposed by 

 the former state ? 



rooD. 



In considering this branch of the inquiry we will examine briefly the 

 subject of food. Tlie hog is an omnivorous animal; he eats both animal 

 and vegetable food ; his instinct demands and his health requires it. In 

 his native state he obtains the animal food required by the industrious 

 use of his nose in digging for worms and insects; but the most improved 

 methods of modern swine-breeding have proclaimed the nose of the hog 

 a useless appendage, and bred it to the smallest iDossible size — a thing 

 of beauty to adorn a ring. The animal, thus deprived of the natural 

 means of obtaining a supply of animal food, is forced to subsist almost 

 exclusively upon vegetable diet, consisting almost wholly of corn. That 

 this style of feeding long pursued is not conducive to the highest state 

 of health would seem self-evident. In the hog-growing districts, corn 

 alone is often the only food fed to swine from birth to slaughtering, 

 and it is in these districts that the disease is most j^revalent and fatal. 

 On the contrary, hogs fed the oft'al from miUc and cheese factories, or 

 li'om city and hotel garbage, are always most free from disease. In the 

 city of New Albany, Indiana, there are more swine to the square mUe 

 than elsewhere in the State ; their rights are somewhat sacred ; they 

 run in every street, sleep in every alley, and break into almost every 

 yard; as scavengers they constitute a sort of independent body of health 

 police, auxiliary to the board of health ; the average councilma.n regards 

 them in some sense as his constituency, and the people, therefore, have 

 vainly prayed for hog-ordinances and hog-cholera, and stUl the animal 

 feeds u])on our bounty, multiplies his race, and ahnost defies disease. 



WATER. 



During the diy months of the fall season it seldom happens that lioga 

 have a ])roper supply of good pure water, even in well-watered districts 

 of country. In all the herds examined where the disease prevailed, in 

 but one instance was a proper supply of pure water observed; in a large 

 uumjl)er of cases there was positively no water, only thin mud at the 



