3 oo VETERINARY LECTURES 



lumps of rock-salt should be scattered over the pastures for the 

 animals to lick. Liming, also, has a good effect on some land; 

 but, from my fifty years' experience, salt is much better, and lands 

 on which, in former years, the disease was intensely rife, have, I am 

 pleased to state, by the application of salt, now been entirely cleared 

 of it. The question is, if the cause of red-water in cattle is the tick, 

 how does it happen that the application of salt to the pastures 

 eradicates the complaint ? 



472. Swine Fever, Red Soldier, or Blue Sickness.— 



This disease is of a highly infectious and contagious typhoid 

 character ; it is rapidly spread by contact and cohabitation, and 

 by putting healthy pigs into a box, hull, or place from which 

 diseased animals have been taken, and which have not been properly 

 disinfected. After exposure to infection the malady has a period of 

 incubation, varying from five to seven days. The post-mortem 

 reveals that the organs principally affected are the large (caecum, in 

 particular) and small intestines, and the stomach, the lining mem- 

 brane of which, at the onset, is congested with small raised red spots 

 seen above the surface. As the disease advances, these spots turn 

 dirty white, and ultimately become ulcers of various sizes, in some 

 cases running one into another — that is, becoming confluent— more 

 particularly round the ileo-caecal valve, where the small intestine 

 joins the large one. As the case progresses, the ulcers change in 

 character, and have a characteristic centre of a dirty grey or dark 

 appearance, surrounded by well-defined yellowish-red rings. In 

 some of the cases there is a deposit of an exudate on the mucous 

 coat of the stomach and bowels of a bran-like appearance, called the 

 diphtheritic form of the disease. The cases, however, differ greatly; 

 some attacks are mild, while others are very severe, in which latter 

 case other organs become implicated, such as the lungs, heart, 

 liver, etc. But the lesions in the alimentary tract are most to be 

 depended upon in the diagnosis of the disease. 



473. Symptoms— The first to be noticed are the listless, languid 

 condition of the animal and the extreme pallor and coldness of the skin. 

 This latter symptom is a very characteristic one, yet it has not been 



