DISEASE AMONG SWINE AND OTHER DOMESTIC ANIMALS. Ill 



blood. Post-mortem examiuatious showed cougestion of the lungs, and sometimes worm» 

 in the intestines. The Last type of the disease is now prevailing among a numbei' of 

 herds in this vicinity and is proving very destructive. Occasionally the hair of the 

 animal nearly all comes off and the skin is a broad, raw surface. I have had two hogs 

 to recover from this form of the disease. I believe the best treatment is to give the 

 hogs plenty of room to range over. I keep salt and ashes in my feed-lot and give them 

 all the pit-coal tliey will eat, and occasionally a bran-mash wet with poke-root tea. I 

 believe poke-root to be a preventive of disease in hogs. So far as my own experience 

 goes, I have found it a cure for diseases among fowls. By following the above treat- 

 ment, I have not lost a single hog or fowl by fisease this season. 



Mr. James W. Grace, Watterborough, Colleton County, South Caro- 

 lina, says: 



The past year has been an imusual one with hogs. They have been attacked with 

 a disease known as cholera, which usually kills them within about ten days after the 

 first symptoms make their appearance. They refuse to eat and seem to desire to lie 

 down all the time, and apparently suifer very much. I have not known anything like 

 it in the last fifteen years. It made its appearance about the 1st of September. 



Mr. Aaron Dresser, Hardinsburg, Breckinridge County, Kentucky^ 

 says : 



The disease common among hogs, and known as cholera, has prevailed extensively 

 in some parts of this county, and has been very fatal. I have heard of no remedy that 

 can be depended upon. 



Mr. C. B. EiCHARDSON, Henderson, Rusk County, Texas, says: 



Before the war I lived near the Mississippi River, in Carroll Parish, Louisiana. A 

 disease called cholera broke out among the liogs. It was the first epidemic ever seen 

 by the planters in that vicinity. Most of the planters had very large herds of hogs, 

 as there was a good range in the swamps back of the farms. Every form of treatment 

 "was used without any marked success. The attacks of the disease were quite sudden. 

 Some would swell up and the flesh would look livid, and they would die in twenty- 

 four hours. Some were constipated and others would have diarrhea. Fat hogs, as 

 well as lean ones, were subject to attack. I had two killed when first taken, and got 

 my family physician to assist me in ra?ik.mg a, post-mortem examination. The bowels 

 "were constipated, and the inflammation of the bowels and stomach was very great. 

 I kept the hogs in a dry inclosure, under the gin-house and cotton-shed. I put tar in 

 the troughs, and fed with corn boiled in lye and copperas water, and poke-root decoc- 

 tion to drink, and used various other nostrums in vogue without success. I burned 

 the hogs that died. One neighbor drove his well hogs four miles into the swamp, and 

 made a man camp with them there, with some success, he thought, as they appeared 

 to die at a less rapid rate. 



I have lost some large hogs and pigs this summer with this epidemic here. The dis- 

 ease appears to be a violent fever, and kills the animals in a very few days. I put one 

 tine hog in a lot where it had a good, dry shelter. I tried to doctor it with liquids, but 

 could not tempt it to drink anything. I tried to give it a dose of calomel on a piece 

 of beef, but could not induce it to eat anything at all, and finally gave it up to die. It 

 lay three or four days in its bed, and after awhile it got up and ate a few mouthf uls of 

 corn, and finally recovered without any treatment. I fattened it this fall, and on 

 butchering it I found the lungs and intestines adhering strongly to the sides, and the 

 intestines also tied in lumps with fine ligaments. On the intestines was a large ball four 

 inches in diameter, filled tight with thick matter like dough. 



Many nostrums published as cures have been tried with such little success that the 

 farmers now let the disease take its course without attempting to do much of anything. 

 When a hog once refuses to eat, little can be done for him. 



Mr. William Dearmond, Irish Grove, Atchison County, Missouri, 

 says: 



The disease known as hog-cholera (a term applied to almost every malady that kills 

 hogs) has done great damage in this neighborhood and adjoining communities. It is 

 the same in almost every instance ; it is only varied by the difterent conditions of the 

 animal at tlie time of attack. Here the disease is contagious, and from the time of 

 exposure until its development varies from nine to fourteen days. Symptoms, stupid, 

 and refuse food, high fever, then eruption of the skin, sore eyes, and bowels either con- 

 stipated or the reverse. In such cases death usually results within from four to seven 



