DISEASE AMONG SWINE AND OTHER DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 149 



ger for a week or so and (lieu die. Others ^Yo^lld breathe rapidly, as if greatly fatigued, 

 while still others would be purged, &c. My neighbors generally suffered as badly or 

 even vrorse than I did. Those that escaped in the fall are losing their hogs now (Feb- 

 ruary 2). A great many remedies have been tried, but with little success. 



Mr. Cyeus Eice, Sardiuia, Erie County, New York, says : 



Occasionally during the ^last twenty years we have lost a few cattle by a disease 

 which I think is diphtheria. Many have, no doubt, died for a lack of a knowledge of 

 the disease, and others because remedies were not applied soon enough. The first 

 symptoms are profuse weeping, quick and labored breathing, driveling, and, as the 

 disease advances, the imlse quicken's. In the last stages of the disease the blood 

 courses through the veins like a running stream. The animal refuses to either eat or 

 drink, its tlanks settle in, and it wanders around until it finally falls down and dies. 

 After losing six head by the disease, the writer saved several others by a free use of 

 wliisky, giving saltpeter and borax in the first stages. The last-named articles (a 

 tablespoonful of each) can be given in a bran mash once in every two or three hours, 

 if the animal does not refuse to eat. If it refuses to take food, the throat should bo 

 well swabbed. When the disease extends up the pharynx and into the cavities of the 

 head, and a thick, yellow matter runs from the nostrils, it is questionable if the dis- 

 ease can be reached so as to etiect a cure. A few years since a neighbor of mine cured 

 a cow of the disease by feeding saltpeter and borax in the inside of potatoes, which 

 she would eat. A year thereafter the cow had a second attack, which failed to yield 

 to treatment, and she died. I do not doubt that any medicine that is efficacious in 

 diphtheria in a person would be good in this disease in stock, providing it was used iu 

 time. Perhaps a free use of sulphur might prove beneficial. 



There is another disease that, so far as I know, has always proved fatal, although 

 of not very frequent occurrence. It usually attacks calves, yearlings, or two-year- 

 olds. The first symptom noticed is seen in the animal lying down, a refusal to eat, 

 and, in a short time, inability to get upon its feet. It generally dies within from 

 twenty-four to forty-eight hours. On taking off the hide, the legs and body, on one 

 side, appear as if bruised to a jelly. I think the jelly appearance is the result of 

 inflammation, but the cause is unknown here. It is sometimes called murrain, but I 

 doubt if that is the correct name of the disease. We have no remedy. 



