SWINE AND THEIR MANAGEMENT. 945 



conveys the impression that the diseases so named are similar 

 to or identical with the Asiatic cholera, or cholera of men, which 

 is not the case. In fact, what our farmers and swine-breeders 

 are used to call cholera is not a single or separate disease, but 

 rather a group of several kindred diseases, similar to each other 

 in regard to causes, morbid process, contagiousness, arid final 

 termination, but differing very much as to symptoms, seat of 

 morbid process, course, and duration." 



The proper name for all this class of diseases is "Anthrax," 

 which is a Greek word signifying carbuncle or virulent ulcer. 



PREVENTIVE MEASURES. The first thing to be done is to so 

 select and manage the breeding stock as to insure a good consti- 

 tution and development. Breed only from mature sows, and see 

 to it that your breeding stock comes from a healthy, vigorous 

 herd, and that the food and care are such as to insure a well 

 developed animal. Do not buy show stock at the fairs which 

 has been pampered and overfed, for in a majority of cases it has 

 been injured in this way so as to be unsafe for breeding pur- 

 poses. The great majority of breeding stock shipped by the 

 men who make a business of furnishing the farmers with pure- 

 bred pigs is made too fat. I do not think the breeders are to 

 blame for this any more than their patrons, for the latter demand 

 that the pigs shall look nice and smooth, and plenty of corn will 

 bring them to this condition. 



Pure drinking water should always be provided. I have 

 little doubt that allowing hogs to drink from filthy pools or 

 wallows has been in many cases the cause of the loss of a herd. 

 A few years since the disease broke out with great violence on 

 a farm in my neighborhood, and on visiting the farm to see if 

 any local cause for it could be found, I learned that the supply 

 of water in the well had failed, and the owner had been pump- 

 ing water from an abandoned cistern located in a barnyard; and 

 on examination it was found that there was two feet of manure 

 settled in the bottom of this cistern. Even where there is pure 

 running water in the pasture it often becomes a means of con- 

 tamination if the disease prevails on farms above, as the germs 

 of disease will be carried by the water to the pasture below. If 



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