HOW TO PREVENT DISEASE iii 



it as a reliable preventive of much disease. Because 

 fowls have sometimes been injured by eating lumps of 

 lime, others are shy of using this cheap aid. The 

 remedy is — not to distribute lumps. Whitewash is a 

 universal cleanser and purifier, and its whiteness has also 

 a value in the fowl house in the reflection of light. 



The roup medicines, the diarrhoea and cholera medi- 

 cines, the applications for chicken pox and mangelike 

 affections, depend largely for their curative virtues on 

 the disinfectants which they contain. The lice paints 

 most popular contain such ingredients. The whole 

 round of preventive — and, one m'ight add, of curative 

 practice as well — revolves about the use of disinfec- 

 tants. 



Even for " gapes " (the choking caused by thread- 

 like red worms in the windpipe) the only practical, im- 

 mediate general treatment, when the runs cannot be 

 changed to fresh ones, is to spray these runs with a not 

 too strong disinfectant. Twenty years ago, I raised 

 chicks on thoroughly infected ground with practically 

 no loss, by spraying the soil with disinfectants. 



It is rather safe to say that the most widely reaching 

 scourge of the modern poultry yard, " white diarrhoea," 

 in its several forms, has absolutely no chance of cure 

 unless it be along the line of preventive and disinfective 

 treatment. Scientists making a special study of this 

 disease have, up to 191 2, acknowledged that the only 

 advance toward successful treatment lay in the use of 

 disinfectants. The treatment was applied to the eggs, 

 the incubators and the brooders, the excreta, etc. ; and, 

 even with this, the breeding of rugged, outdoor-grown 

 stock was named as the best surety against the disease. 



