228 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



did not have another case for two years, and then all at once 

 we found that wherever they were bringing dressed meat 

 in this State, hog cholera was making its appearance in the 

 surrounding country. It was an enigma. Holyoke had one 

 of those establishments, and we found hog cholera in all the 

 adjoining towns. It was so in the eastern part of the State, 

 it was so in central Massachusetts. Worcester had it at 

 the State hospital and at the city poorhouse establishment ; 

 the hogs were all infected with it, — and " Where did they 

 get it? Where did it come from?" was the question. A 

 long and very thorough examination finally developed this, 

 — and I won't e:o on and tell how we knew, it will take too 

 much time, — that this dressed meat that came from Chicago 

 was bought and sold out by the various butchers. They 

 carried that meat out without washing it, and that meat car- 

 ried the cholera. We traced it, and ascertained certainly 

 that that was the way the disease was disseminated through 

 the State. 



Now, then, these farmers are pretty good fellows, but 

 after all they are pretty sharp with the Commonwealth of 

 Massachusetts. Sometimes we found milkmen who were 

 furnishing milk to the hotels and restaurants of our larger 

 towns and cities, and who, in order to sell their milk to 

 these establishments, were obliged to take their swill. The 

 result of that was that almost all these fellows had hog 

 cholera among their swine ; and the Cattle Commissioners 

 went there and cleaned them uj) in the good old-fashioned 

 way, slaughtering all they had, and paying for the well 

 ones ; and the man having had that lot cleaned out would 

 go right off and 1)uy some more, and feed them with the 

 same kind of swill. Then the Cattle Commissioners would 

 go and kill them off again, and he made a very good thing 

 out of it ; until finally we made this regulation, which was 

 sent out to all the boards of health, that in all cases of hog 

 cholera, after the owners had been thoroughly warned, the 

 boards of health should innnediately proceed to isolate and 

 thoroughly quarantine those premises, to kill none, but let 

 the man have the hog cholera just as long as he wanted to, 

 and when he got sick of it he would stop feeding swill. We 

 have had nothing to do with it since, and that was in 1886. 

 That finished the hog cholera. 



