Cholera Suis, Hog Cholera, etc. 53 



A cough may be present but is by no means a marked symptom. 



Emaciation advances with great rapidity, the patient arches the 

 back, tucks up the abdomen, moves weakly and unsteadily or is 

 unable to rise, and dies in one or several weeks, it may be quietly 

 or in a state of coma, but usually without convulsions. 



Symptoms in Subacute and Chronic Forms. In this type the 

 disease may be obscure, and even overlooked, so that infected 

 animals carry the microorganism into fresh herds, without rousing 

 a suspicion as to its true source. In other cases, after a slow and 

 progressive development, it takes on such a distinct pathognomo- 

 nic character that its diagnosis becomes more easy. 



In the slightest cases there may be only a capricious or irregu- 

 lar appetite, drooping tail, enlarged inguinal glands, and a pro^ 

 gressive emaciation, with loss of life and strength and occasiona 

 irregularity of the bowels. The greasy exudation on the skin 

 and black scaly encrustation is not uncommon. Such patients 

 usually survive but they are liable to prove unthrifty and un- 

 profitable. 



In other cases the pig becomes dull and listless, leaves its fel- 

 lows, creeps and lies much under the litter, has impaired or 

 irregular appetite, some costiveness followed by a foetid diarrhoea, 

 abdominal tenderness, enlarged inguinal glands, progressive ema- 

 ciation, arched loins, hollow flanks, skin exudation, and often- 

 times in the end erythematous eruption with petechise and black 

 scaly exudate on the skin. It is in these protracted cases especi- 

 ally that the formation and detachment of the necrotic intestinal 

 sloughs take place and these may pass in the faeces as flattened 

 rounded masses or more extensive plaques. Necrotic ulcers are 

 also liable to show on the buccal mucous membrane or skin. The 

 patient may finally die of colliquative diarrhoea, of exhaustion 

 and marasmus, in a state of coma as in the more acute cases. 

 The mortality may be high and the survivors are liable to prove 

 unthrifty and unprofitable. 



Diagnosis. With a group of plagues in swine, bearing a strong 

 family resemblance, and maintained by microorganisms, which, 

 though maintaining distinct characters', yet show so much in 

 common that it seems not impossible that they may have been 

 originally derived from a common ancestor, and in face of the 

 not infrequent complication of two of these microbes in one 

 patient, it becomes a task of great difficulty to diagnose at once 



