DISEASE AMONG SWINE AND OTHER DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 103 



Mr. John Gordon, Lyunville, Morgan Goimty, Illinois, says : 



With the exception of a disease amoug fowls, and the so-called cholera among hogs, 

 our stock is and has heen reasonably healthy. But our farmers are annually great 

 losers by the ravages of the disease called cholera among hogs. Tlio loss in Morgan 

 County is estimated at twenty-live thousand head annually, worth, on an average, 

 $10 per head, aggregating $250,000 per annum — a loss largely greater than our farmers 

 can well boar. There is every reason why Congress should make an appropriation to 

 enable your department to investigate the cause of the disease and the remedies nec- 

 essary to cure it. I am satislied that if a like disease prevailed among tlie food-pro- 

 ducing animals of Europe, millions of dollars would be expended in efforts to discover 

 the cause and remedies to prevent and cure the disease. It is too expensive and exten- 

 sive for individual enterprise. While we have had the disease on our farm live differ- 

 ent times in the last fifteen years, I am as ignorant as to its cause and the necessary 

 remedies as when it first came. It seems to come at all seasons of the year, and the 

 hogs are generally operated on differently. Many remedies Have been tried on our 

 farm, but as yet without beneficial results. The causes are so obscure, and the treat- 

 ment is, as far as I know, so unsatisfactory that it is difficult to give anything like a 

 clear statement on the subject. I am of the opinion that a commission composed of 

 scientific men, employed indefinitely, would in time discover the cause and with it 

 the necessary preventives and remedies. I hope that you will at an early day call the 

 attention of Congress to the importance of the subject, and that it will make an 

 Appropriation sufficiently large to investigate the whole matter thoroughly. 



Mr. J. E. Kakr, Big Flats, Chemung County, Xew York, says : 



About the 1st of October last I bought a lot of cattle in the Buffalo cattle market, 

 said to have been raised and fed in the State of Wisconsin, and on the 10th of the 

 same month nine of those cattle were sick and one had died. I sent for Professor Law, 

 veterinary surgeon of Cornell University, and after examination he said they had the 

 Texas fever. I commenced using his prescription to prevent the disease from spread- 

 ing and to save the sick ones. Out of nine attacked I lost five head. On the 19th of 

 November I bought another car-load of cattle, said to have been raised in the States 

 of Ohio and Michigan. About two days ago the same disease made its appearance 

 among them, and how many of them I shall lose time will tell. Now, what I wish to 

 say unto you is this, as you are at the head of the Department of Agriculture you 

 might lay such facts as these before Congress, and ask it to enact some law to prevent 

 the spread of the disease by prohibiting the transportation of Texas cattle to the East. 

 These cattle are bi-ought to the markets of Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and indeed all 

 the great cattle markets of the country, where they are fed and watered, and the next 

 day cattle from other States, or native cattle, as they are called, are brought in, and, 

 eating the hay the Texans left, get the disease and spread it all over the country. No 

 one is responsible. Farmers who go to the markets to buy cattle are not to blame, as 

 they do not know what yards sick Texans have been in, and dealers do not care as 

 long as they can sell and get their commissions. I do hope yon will try to get Con- 

 gress to do something toward prohibiting the shipping of diseased Texas cattle through 

 the country. 



Mr. A. CoFFMAN, Eeynolds, Rock Island County, Illinois, says : 



At present the only prevalent disease among farm-animals here is cholera among 

 hogs, and of this there are so many different forms, that it is difficult to give a diag- 

 nosis of it. It not only occurs in widely-different forms, but also under circumstances 

 and conditions as varied and as widely different. Hence no theory has yet been ad- 

 vanced here but that some well-known facts occur which knock the theory "higher 

 than a kite." 



The form of the disease which prevails here to the greatest extent, and which 

 causes the greatest loss to hog-raisers, is what is termed pig or shoat cholera. I should 

 say that it resembles a low form of typhoid pneumonia, generally attended with a 

 violent cough, sometimes with vomiting and purging, frequently with sore head and 

 eyes — the eyes sometimes bursting entirely out of the sockets. They sometimes live 

 for weeks, all the time wasting away, and occasionally die within a few hours. This 

 form seldom attacks hogs a year or more old. The more violent forms vary so much, 

 that I will not attempt a description. As to the remedies, they are as varied as the 

 notions of the owners can make them. Everything that is heard of or can be thought 

 of as likely to be of benefit is tried, but as often fails. My own experience is (and I 

 have had considerable of it) that medicine is of little use. I had it among my shoats 

 last winter, had previously used nothing to prevent it except a little concentrated 

 lye occasionally (if that be a preventive), and used nothing while it lasted in the 

 way ot medicine. I changed their rests every other day, and had them driven con- 



