58 DISEASE AMONG SWINE AND OTHER DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



This solution is poured on the b.acks and otlier affected parts of the sheep. Sometimes 

 a small amount of red precipitate is used, but this is considered dangerous. 



But few hogs are raised here, and they are generally healthy. However, there have 

 been some cases of cholera, but how the animals were treated I cannot say. Fowls 

 are generally healthy, with no prevailing disease. 



Mr. T. H. Baur, Augusta, Macon County, Illinois, says : 



Hogs have been destroyed every year for the last twelve years in this locality by a 

 disease known as " hog cholera." The dist^ase has never, as far as I have been able to 

 learn, prevailed in the open prairie without our being able to trace it to some marked 

 source of contagion, such, for instance, as n.ative swine coming in contact with hogs 

 brought in from localities where the dis(%ase was prevailing. The disease prevails 

 almost continuously alon^ the timber belts on the water-courses, owing doubtless to 

 the fact that hogs are suffered to run at large, while many careless persons throw the 

 dead carcasses of the animals into the streams, thereby spreading the disease along the 

 whole length of the water-course below. 



Where the disease breaks out spontaneously as it were, the symptoms are a violent 

 cough attended with high fever. I have been told that on examinaticm of such cases 

 after death the lungs were found in a decayed or rotten condition, while the other vital 

 organs presented little or no derangement. Such cases originate in close, ill-ventilated 

 quarters, such as are found under the floors of old buildings or about or under straw- 

 stacks. The carcasses of such, if eaten by well hogs, or ev^en the droppings from them 

 will communicate the disease in a more intensitied form and fatal chai'acter than that 

 described above. With the latter cases the hogs die more suddenly than in the first 

 instance, sometimes within twelve hours from the attack, while the former will often 

 linger for days. In some cases the latter, in addition to the cough and high fever, will 

 be extremely costive ; in other cases the animal will be affected with an active diarrhea. 

 Some will swell up about the ears, the skin will crack open and the blood will ooze 

 therefrom. All or nearly all of those thus affected die. The few that do recover had 

 better die, as they rarely become thrifty .again. 



We have never yet found a remedy that will effect a cure. The best informed stock- 

 raisers are of the opinion that relief must come, if it ever does come, through prevent- 

 ives rather than through remedies. 



Those of us who have been most successful in keeping our hogs free from disease 

 have done so by giving them good, comfortable, clean, well- ventilated quarters, and 

 as a general thing those who most nearly meet these conditions have the best success. 



Fowls are affected and thousands die annually by a disease known by the name of 

 cholera. The symptous are about as follows : Two or three days before death they 

 will appear droopy and stupid; eat but little if any ; become very thirsty, have a very 

 active bowel-complaint, and finally drop down dead. Another symptom is seen in the 

 gills and comb of the fowl, which become pale soon after attack. The only remedy 

 that has yet been employed with success here is to rid the premises of fowls for twelve 

 months. After that they may be ktipt again for a few years free from disease. There 

 are those who are of the opinion that fowls exhaust something on the premises that the 

 system requires, and until that constituent is replaced they cannot live and thrive. 



Mr. E. K. Slosson, Verona, Grundy County, Illinois, says : 



The hog seems very much more subject to fatal diseases now than he did forty years 

 ago. To arrive at a correct etiology of the diseases of this animal, which forty years 

 ago were unknown, we are forced to notice the then physical coiulition of the animal 

 as compared with his jiresent, tracing the changes which have been effected by con- 

 finement, change of food, and the practical method of producing new varieties which 

 shall take on the greatest number of pounds of muscle and fat in tlie shortest time. 

 Of all the domestic animals the hog is the most easily made to undergo changes of 

 form and temperament, and hence it is that the varieties of the hog are continually 

 increasing. New breeds, well advertised and puffed, are multiplying, and the great 

 and only object appears to be to find a variety that shall eclipse all others in maximum 

 weight at the earliest possible period of their existence. In the insane pursuit of gold 

 stamina of constitution are lost sight of, and the hog-raiser who has three hundred 

 head to-day in four weeks' time may be reduced to half a dozen hcail. He sustains a 

 loss of $;5,000 from the emasculated system of the hogs making them susceptible to dis- 

 ease which a healthy and strong constitution will not take on. A change of constitu- 

 tion was doubtless brought about in part from confinement, a condition unknown to 

 the hog before domestication. Confinement, as all physiologists know, decreases mus- 

 cular growth and strength, and the nervous energies are correspondingly weakened. 

 On the heel of tliis a change of food takes place. Indian corn is fed in many parts of the 

 country to the exclusion of those kinds of food upon which he had previously lived, for 

 hundreds of years perhaps, and corn is almost exclusively fat-producing. This combina- 



