18 DISEASE AMONG SWINE AND OTHER DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



of more beuelit to the farmers and stock-raisers of our country, and add more to the 

 natioual wealth, thau anything that has ever been undertaken or accomplished by the • 

 Department of Agriculture duriug its existence. I take the liberty of expressing my 

 opinion thus freely, because of my almost constant residence in country towns and 

 among farmers, my past connection with throe ditferent agricultural colleges in this 

 country, and with one in Europe as professor of veterinary science, and still more, my 

 extensive correspondence on the subject of live-stock and its diseases, with a great 

 many farmers, and stock-men in nearly every State in the Union, Avbo ask my advice 

 as the conductor of the veieriuary department of the Chicago Weekly Tribune, have 

 given me ample opportunities to study the real wauts and needs of the American 

 stock-raisers. 



With your permission I will remark that a rational and successful treatment, and 

 still more a prevention of a disease, will be comparatively easy if the diagnosis is 

 correct, and if the nature and the causes of it are understood and well known. If 

 they are not, and if the diagnosis is doubtful, a successful prevention is impossible, 

 and a rational treatment is out of the question. The best and most scientific prescrip- 

 tions can do no good in the hands of any one who does not know what to do with 

 them, and still the average American farmer craves for prescriptions like a child for 

 sweetmeats, because he has the erroneous idea, fostered by quacks and charlatans, that 

 experimentation will reveal a specific remedy for every disease, and that medical sci- 

 ence has nothing to do but to label each disease and to search for a specific. Even 

 learned medical men have made grave mistakes, aud have delayed the progress of 

 science considerably by their great confidence in drugs and their search after specific 

 remedies which do not exist. In all diseases, but especially in epizootic, enzootic, and 

 contagious diseases, a removal or a destruction of the causes, constitutes the only 

 rational and effective prevention. Therefore, if the nature and the causes of those 

 diseases are thoroughly investigated, and the result is laid before the public in lan- 

 guage comprehensible to any man with the usual amount of intellect, a great many 

 millions of dollars may be saved every year. 



When our agricultural colleges were called iuto existence and most liberally endowed 

 by act of Congress, I hoped and expected that a chair for veterinary science would be 

 cheated in every one of them. Instead of that, men who have no interest whatever in 

 agriculture, though some of them may be learned enough, become the presidents in nearly 

 every institution. The machinery became very complicated; a great many things 

 were taught which are of no use, either to the farmer or the higher mt chanic ; ex- 

 jicnses accumulated, aud no money remained available to teach those sciences most 

 intimately related to agriculture. ##**■** 



The investigation which you propose would have been made long ago, and many 

 millions of dollars would have been saved to our farmers, if the agricultural colleges 

 had complied with the law of Cougres which commands them to teach those sciences 

 related to agriculture, &c., or if a veterinary school worthy of the name were in ex- 

 istence in our country. 



Mr. Elisha Gridley, Half-Day, Lake Couuty, Illiuois, says: 



stock here is generally healthy. Sheep were seriously affected with foot-rot a few 

 years since. The diseased flocks were either cured or removed. A strong solution of 

 pulverized blue vitriol, applied after thoroughly paring the feet, is one of the remedies 

 used. 



Cholera has not affected the hogs in this locality, but has destroyed large numbers 

 of common fowls, turkeys, &c. Asafetida-gum, inclosed in a mosquito-bar and placed 

 in the water they drink, has been used as a preventive, aud, I believe, with favorable 

 results. 



Mr. John E. Thomas, Sheboygan Falls, Wis., says : 



Farm-animals in this region are free from contagious and other prevalent diseases 

 to which they are subject. Since the prevalence of "epizootic," some years since, our 

 farm-stock have measurably escaped diseases of every description. Foot-rot in sheep, 

 cholera in hogs, pip, &c., in fowls, aud contagious diseases amoug horses, have all given 

 us the go-by in later years. ' ' Epizootic " is so well known that I do not regard a diag- 

 nosis necessary. 



Mr. T. Bacon, Waucouda, 111., writes as follows : 



Farm-animals in this county, so far as my knowledge extends, have been blessed 

 with an almost entire absence of all diseases, exceptiug cholera amoug chickens. 

 Poultry-yards have sulfered terribly. All the nostrums have been tried, but with very 

 poor success. Probably three-fourths of all the flocks infected have died. Even 



