TREATMENT OF CHOLERA 233 



frequent rains. Large numbers of buzzards were attracted by the 

 chance for a feast, and in a few days the heavens were black with 

 large hordes of these disease-carrying birds. 



It was only a short time until the outbreak was widespread 

 over the entire community. Dozens of farms were infected, and, 

 coming as it did in the midst of the most busy time of the year, 

 dead animals were everywhere neglected and left to decompose in 

 the fields, or thrown into shallow trenches and partially buried. 

 Such conditions as these are just where cholera thrives, and the 

 outbreak spread like a prairie fire before a breeze. Herd after 

 herd was destroyed, and when I visited this section of the state 

 several months later there was scarcely a hog to be found. Many 

 farms had not a single hog, and the owners declared their intention 

 of remaining out of the hog business until some means had been 

 found of preventing such enormous losses. 



This outbreak again brings before us many important object- 

 lessons in connection with cholera. First, it again illustrates the 

 fact that the hog-cholera virus is capable of living in infected pens 

 through the winter months, and will attack new animals which may 

 be placed in the pens the following spring. This is especially the 

 case where no proper effort is made to thoroughly clean up and 

 disinfect the pens. No such effort had been made in this instance. 

 Had these pens been thoroughly cleaned, all waste burned, the 

 surface of the pens thoroughly sprinkled with chlorid of lime or 

 solution of cresol, and then exposed to the action of sun and frost, 

 there might have been a different story to tell. It takes actual 

 work, and lots of it, to rid an infected hog lot of cholera virus, and 

 unless we are willing to put forth the necessary effort to destroy the 

 disease germs on our premises we will have repeated losses just as 

 frequently as we put new, healthy animals back in the infected 

 feed lots. 



This outbreak also very plainly shows the attractive power 

 which exposed dead animal carcasses have for buzzards. In this 

 outbreak it was only a few hours after the first animsls were left 

 exposed in the fields until a flock of buzzards had begun to gather, 

 and in a remarkably short time they were present in large numbers. 

 These birds, in circling over other farms adjoining the original seat 

 of the outbreak, quickly scattered infectious material where it 



