400 Diseases of Swine. 



not too sick to eat a full feed of turnips, will certainly get 

 well, and that no well hog, thus treated, and fed on turnips, 

 will take the disease, even by contagion. 



Mr. Mellon believes that a too highly stimulating diet is 

 the chief cause of the presence of both hog cholera and Texas 

 cattle disease, in the Mississippi valley. Hence, acting on 

 this principle, he claims to have cured the latter disease also 

 "very promptly and certainly, by an exclusively watery 

 diet, the best and most certain remedy being young corn in 

 the milk. There is no danger of excess. The diseased herd 

 may be safely turned into a field of young corn, and left to cure 

 themselves, which they will do in a few days.'^ If green 

 corn cannot be procured, any' other succulent food will 

 answer the purpose. 



This opinion of the general causation of these diseases is 

 largely correct, and deserves the attention of both hog and 

 cattle breeders in the Mississippi valley and elsewhere. 



MALIGNANT EPIZOOTIC CATARRH. 



This disease, which, as we have seen (p. 351), is the 

 most fatal of all among sheep in this country, is also ex- 

 tremely destructive among hogs. For example, in the years 

 1875 and 1876 it swept over Missouri, Illinois, and the 

 neighboring States, killing a very large percentage of swine 

 in that section, and attracting general attention by its un- 

 checked devastations. 



In regard to its causes, they are to be divided, as in all of 

 this class of diseases, into those which render the animal 

 susceptible to the poison, and the poison itself. Of the latter 

 we have no positive knowledge. It is believed to be a float- 

 ing germ, which develops and multiplies with extreme 

 rapidity when it finds a soil which suits. Such a soil is 

 presented by the mucous lining membrane of hogs which 

 •have been kept in foul styes, and whose skins are dirty and 



