DISEASE AMONG SWINE AND OTHER DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 97 



Mr. William Johnson, Saville, Crenshaw County, Alabama, says : 



The first cases of hog-cholera that came to my knowledge were in East Tennessee in 

 1863 and next in Alabama in 1874. The disease appeared to travel south. The best 

 remedy I ever tried was stj'ong lye in food or the tea of poke-root mixed with corn- 

 meal ; also a mild tea m.ade of May-apple or mandrake mixed with meal appeared to 

 be more effectual than any other remedy tried. 



Mr. JA3IES Weiler, Alburtis, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, says : 



I give you the following preventive prescription for hog-cholera : Salt the hogs twice 

 a week regularly, using a teaspoonful of pulverized copperas to every four quarts of 

 salt ; or, for 100 hogs, procure 50 bushels of clean wood-ashes and mix therewith salt and 

 sulphur and ten pounds of pulverized mandrake-root, and scatter one-half the amount 

 where the hogs can get at it ; and at another time scatter the balance in the same way. 

 The pulverized mandrake-root acts vigorously on the liver, and both sulphur and 

 ashes are good remedial agents in common use. Or take two xjarts of sulphur, one 

 part of antimony, one part of saltpeter, one part of copperas, and a small portion of 

 asafetida, mis with salt and place in a trough in a dry place where the hogs can at 

 all times have free access to it. 



As a preventive for diseases of chickens use asafetida and some finely-ground black 

 pepper. Put the same in a piece of cloth or rag, nail it in the bottom of the vessel 

 where you water your chickens, or, if the vessel is iron or stone, lay it on the bottom 

 and confine it there. You should not use too much at one time. One-half ounce every 

 two weeks will answer for fifty or sixty chickens. 



Mr. Evan Good, JSTew Vienna, Highland County, Ohio, says: 



Hog-cholera, so called, is and has been for three years alarmingly prevalent in this 

 and adjoining counties. Last year the disease was terribly fatal, probably from 60 to 

 70 per cent, of those attacked dying. This year the fatality has not been nearly so 

 great, simply for want of material, farmers in nearly every instance having sought 

 and found a market on its first appearance in their herds. An exception should be 

 made of those cases where the whole herd was attacked at or nearly at the same 

 time. 



You ask for a complete diagnosis of the disease. That would be a task to appal the 

 stoutest. Probably no two men could give the same report. Scarcely two animals on 

 the same farm are held in the same way. Pigs from six to ten months old die faster 

 than those of twelve mouths and upward. Many more die after the fattening season 

 commences in the fall than at any other time. Hogs having a wide range of woods 

 pasture are less liable to infection and more likely to recover when attacked than those 

 confined in pens or small lots, notwithstanding the danger of contamination would 

 seem to be greater. 



Here are a few of the symptoms as I have seen them and as they have been reported 

 to me by neighbors : Fever in nearly all cases ; a dry cough is often a premonitory 

 symptom ; vomiting ; purging ; bleeding at the nose ; bleeding through the pores, 

 particularly about the head ; paralysis of the hinder parts ; giving way of the fore legs ; 

 dropping oft' of the ears and tail ; constipation. One man who saved eleven head out 

 of one hundred and four this fall says that the lungs, or the portion next the heart, was 

 always diseased, while a membrane which surrounds the heart was tilled with water. 

 Sometimes, while eating, a hog will give a squeal of agony, jump a foot or two from the 

 ground, and fall dead. No cure has been found. Turpentine and capsicum are the only 

 preventives I know of that are worthy the name. They will not always prevent, but 

 they have the effect to brace the system for the attack. It is the opinion here that 

 those who have seen the most of the disease know the least about it. Those who have 

 not seen it have at least a theory. Those who have suffered by it come out of the siege 

 with their theories crushed. It is the most confounding and bewildering disease that 

 can be imagined ; it will not be investigated. Let the department dig this thing up 

 and it will have the everlasting thanks of this plague-ridden section. But do not let 

 the investigator enter the field with a theory or he will be disgusted at the outset. 

 Let him follow facts and base his theory thereon. 



Mr. George T. McWhorter, Chickasaw, Colbert County, Alabama, 

 says : 



I send you, in alcohol, by to-day's mail a number of worms taken from the lungs and 

 intestines of hogs that died during the epidemic last summer. This disease was called 

 cholera by farmers in this vicinity — a terra, by the way, which is here used to cover 

 " all the ills that hogs are heir to." These worms are from two different hogs, several 

 miles apart, and show the identity of the trouble. The small worms are from the ali- 

 S. Ex. 35 7 



