Cholera Suis, Hog Cholera, etc. 41 



be destroyed by acids, copperas, or sulphites on the manure and 

 the former may even be exterminated when hog-cholera exists 

 in the vicinity. 



Sows should not be sent from herd to herd for service or other- 

 wise, and any swine that have been hired out, or sent to an ex- 

 hibition, and all that are acquired in any manner, should, on 

 arrival, be excluded from the herd and held in quarantine, well 

 apart for three or four weeks, and finally washed with carbolic 

 acid soap before they are admitted. 



The pestilential prevalence of hog cholera and other swine 

 plagues to-day is largely the result of the great industrial 

 and commercial activity of modern times. In America the dis- 

 ease was comparatively unknown until after 1830, and in 

 Europe even later. But with the advent of steamboat and rail- 

 road, the few pigs raised in separate pens, or secluded localities, 

 and killed and cured near by, gave place to the large herds, sent 

 when fattened to great markets where pigs were collected from 

 distances of many hundreds of miles, the stock animals and the 

 fat occupied in succession the .same boats, cars and yards, and, as 

 a matter of course, the virulent germs were concentrated and 

 diffused through the infected places and things. We cannot go 

 back to the antiquated safer methods, but it would be po,ssible to 

 so regulate our commerce, that the evil could be reduced to a 

 minimum. Separate cars, loading banks, chutes, alleyways, and 

 yards can be re.served for fat swine going to immediate slaughter 

 and no animal having pa.ssed through any of these should be 

 allowed to be taken out for stock purposes, unless it has been 

 passed through a rigid quarantine. The places and things used for 

 such fat swine should be disinfected at intervals, and the manure 

 and offal .should be disinfected, or exposed to a boiling tempera- 

 ture for a sufficient length of time before removal from the 

 premises. Stock swine on their part .should be shipped only on 

 a certificate of the complete immunity of the herd and locality 

 from which they come from swine epizootics, and of the roads or 

 vehicles by which they reached the shipping point. They should 

 be debarred from all yards, loading banks and cars or boats used 

 for fat hogs, and admitted only to such as have just pa.ssed 

 through a thorough disinfection. They should be sent directly 

 to their destination, or if to a market, for purposes of sale, it 



