134 PoKTT Years' Experience of a Peactioal Hog Man. 



Although the whole pharmacopeia has been searched for a 

 specific cure, no such cure has ever been discovered. Many 

 so-called remedies have been boasted and boosted, but not 

 one of them has ever proved efficacious when an emergency 

 arose. Even proper feeding, proper housing and sanitary 

 surroundings, though essential in maintaining animals in 

 a healthy condition and rendering them more able to fight 

 disease, have not proved a safeguard against cholera in- 

 fection. And on the contrary, it might be added, that there 

 is no condition or set of conditions, even improper care and 

 feeding of hogs, that will bring on cholera infection without 

 the presence of the living cholera germ. 



Hog cholera is characteristically a contagious disease and 

 is caused by a living germ that develops and multiplies in 

 the body of the animal and produces a poison fatal to life. 

 Even though scientists have thus far, because of inadequate 

 equipment, been unable to identify the particular bug that 

 causes the havoc, the proof of its existence lies in the fact 

 that if a few drops of blood from a cholera infected hog 

 be injected into the system of one not so infected, the blood 

 of the latter animal will become as thoroughy impregnated 

 with cholera virus as was that of the former. This condi- 

 tion, however, would not and could not obtain if the blood 

 of the original animal did not contain a living, active organ- 

 ism. An inactive or dead foreign substance injected into 

 the blood of the second hog could not multiply or increase 

 in quantity. 



The discovery in this instance, as in the cases of all con- 

 tagious or infectious diseases, of the origin or cause of the 

 disease marked the first steps toward the prevention and 

 control of hog cholera, and thanks to the investigations and 

 activities of our Department of Agriculture and our Ex- 

 perimental Stations, we have, I am firmly convinced, an 

 absolute method of preventing the disease and of bring- 

 ing about its complete eradication. In my mind it is no 

 longer a question of how to prevent hog cholera, but rather 

 is it one of how to provide the proper means under efficient 

 supervision and regulation, and then to get the farmers 

 to use them. 



It may have been noticed that no claim has been made 

 that a cure for this disease has been discovered. Our hope 



