TREATMENT OF CHOLERA 277 



carcass resulted in the infection very rapidly of a large number of 

 the herd, and resulted in enormous loss, even in spite of prompt 

 efforts to get the animals to market. 



Exchange of Work. — Exchange of farm work is a routine occur- 

 rence in every farming community. Especially is this a common 

 practice at certain seasons of the year, such as threshing and 

 haying time and corn-shelling. Perhaps the most extensive ex- 

 change of labor occurs at threshing and corn-shelling time. This 

 mutual helping system is a most praiseworthy one, but it has possi- 

 bilities for harm in connection with spread of hog-cholera which 

 must not be overlooked. It is usually at this season of the year 

 that hog-cholera is most widespread throughout the Central West, 

 and in traveling from one farm to another it is very easy for such 

 a large body of workmen and teams to widely scatter the disease 

 over a very wide district. 



It is a very common custom to do the threshing in the hog 

 lot, in order that the straw stack may be convenient for the 

 animals to sleep around during the winter months. As has al- 

 ready been described, very frequently artificial hog sheds are made 

 by stacking the straw over a wooden framework constructed for 

 this purpose. 



Now, if cholera be present in a herd, and the members of a 

 threshing crew work around this feed lot for a day or two, as is 

 usually the case in threshing, it is only too plain that they will 

 carry away with them a large amount of the infectious material. 

 This is not only carried to the next farm to which the crew moves, 

 but each man carries home with him a certain amount of this dis- 

 ease-producing material each night to his own feed lots. As a 

 result, it is not strange that we find hog-cholcra tends to spread 

 very rapidly at this season of the year. 



I can well remember a most violent outbreak of hog-chobra in 

 western Illinois several years ago which was scattered in just this 

 manner. The deadly nature of this outbreak was most severe, and 

 practically every farmer who was a member of the threshing crew 

 in this circuit had an outbreak of the disease on his premises. I 

 remember visiting one farm while the crew of threshers were there, 

 and I found the threshing operations being carried on in a large 

 feed lot, while over to one side, not over fifty yards from the engine, 



