CHAPTER I. 



Ge;ne;rai, Considerations Regarding the Treatment of ■ 

 PouETRY Diseases. 



There is general agreement on the part of authorities on 

 poultry pathology and practical poultrymen of long experience 

 that in general, "doctoring" poultry is not advisable. The rea- 

 sons for this attitude are primarily the following : 



1. The unit of production with poultry (i. e., the individual 

 bird) is of relatively small value, and if a man's time is worth 

 anything it is too valuable to spend treating sick chickens indi- 

 vidually unless they are show specimens of great individual 

 value. 



2. The "cured" chicken is a menace to the owner, because its 

 identity is likely to be overlooked or forgotten, with the result 

 that it goes into the breeding pen and perpetuates through its 

 offspring the constitutional weakness which was one fundamen- 

 tal factor in bringing about the result that it, rather than some 

 oi its fellows, was ill. 



This point of view has been well stated by Wright in the fol- 

 lowing words : 



"In a large proportion of cases of disease, the birds ought to 

 die or be killed. Even where there is no constitutional taint, the 

 fact that they have succumbed to circumstances which have not 

 affected others, marks them out as the weakest, which unaided 

 Nature would assuredly weed out, and which if we preserve and 

 breed from, perpetuate some amount of that weakness in the 

 progeny. Rheumatism, for instance, can be cured ; of that there 

 is no doubt. But the vast majority who have had such success, 

 agree that the effects are either never recovered from as regards 

 strength and vigor, or else that the original weakness continues ; 

 and the same may be said of some severe contagious diseases, 

 such as diphtheritic roup, which may affect the strongest. On 

 the other hand, many diseases also apparently contagious, and so 

 attacking healthy birds under certain predisposing conditions of 

 exposure or other coincident strain upon the system, do not ap- 



