252 Veterinary Medicine. 



accumulating filth. When fed he plunges his foul snout in his 

 liquid food, and as if this were not enough the fore feet follow, 

 and if the trough is long enough the hind feet as well. Every 

 available saprophytic microbe therefore finds its way down his 

 throat, and the toxins from their growth outside the body accom- 

 pany them to irritate or benumb the mucosa and fit it for the 

 attacks of bacteria, which would otherwise have proved harmless. 

 But in addition to all this, chemical irritants get into the swill 

 and pave the way for the microbes. Salt, brine, and the various 

 caustic washing powders used in washing dishes and tables find 

 their way into the swill barrel often in quantity sufficient to irri- 

 tate and poison. In experiments conducted at the N. Y. State 

 Veterinary College the washing powders have been proved to be 

 most deadly, and upon different farms, a mortality attributed to 

 hog cholera, has again and again been arrested by preventing the 

 entry of these powders into the swill barrel. 



Symptoms. There is dullness, inappetence, hyperthermia 

 (105 ), a tendency to lie under the litter, leaving the herd, when 

 raised the pig arches his back, moves stiffly with grunting, the 

 tail and ears pendent, and the belly tender to the touch. The 

 bowels are at first constipated, the thirst ardent, later diarrhoea 

 may set in, and the skin and snout may have red blotches or 

 patches as in hog cholera. Tympanies and abdominal rumblings 

 are frequent. The animal becomes very dull, weak, emaciated, 

 staggers in walking or is completely paraplegic. 



It may end fatally in twenty-four or forty-eight hours, or 

 death may be deferred for six or eight days or the disease may 

 merge into the chronic form, or recover. The usual foul sur- 

 roundings of the pig and the abundance of microbes and toxins 

 taken in, serve to make enteritis in this animal much more re- 

 doubtable than in other domestic animals. 



The lesions are usually common to stomach and intestine, and 

 consist in abundant mucopurulent discharge, extensive conges- 

 tion, points and extensive patches of blood extravasation, and of 

 lymph infiltration, ulcers, congested peritoneum and mesenteric 

 glands, and congestions and ecchymosis in distant organs. 



The diagnosis between this affection and hog cholera on the 

 one hand and swine plague on the other is not always easy, but 

 it occurs in herds where no introduction of infection can be 



