CHAPTER XXXVIII 

 WHITE DIARRHEA 



Terror and Plague. — No term, perhaps, strikes greater terror 

 to the poultryman than white diarrhea. It is synonymous with 

 such words as plague, scourge, epidemic and pestilence. That 

 it has earned this opprobrium is attested by the fact that thou- 

 sands of chicks are lost annually by this infection, and also be- 

 cause of its resistance to any known treatment. It is success- 

 fully combated, of course, but by preventative measures rather 

 than curative ones. 



Exaggeration. — There is no gainsaying the malady exacts an 

 enormous toll from the poultry raisers, yet I am inclined to think 

 that much of the alarm is the result of sensational writers and 

 highly imaginative persons, who find it more to the liking of 

 their morbid minds to spread terrorism instead of optimism. 

 Calamity is always more lurid than sublimity. These scares, 

 like the alarm about cholera, small pox and infantile paralysis 

 in the human species, are very much exaggerated and do more 

 harm than good. 



Investigations. — It is natural that white diarrhea should have 

 been the object of a great deal of investigation; chemists and 

 bacteriologists have struggled with its mysteries for many years. 

 While, perhaps, they have not been particularly successful thus 

 far in establishing a positive cure for the disease, they have at 

 least succeeded in isolating the germ, learned how to detect it, 

 studied its development and propagation, and the conditions 

 under which it thrives best, and devised satisfactory methods of 

 preventing its spread. 



Causes. — We are told that white diarrhea is caused by at 

 least four different kinds of infection, the most common of which 

 is a bacillus called bacterium pullorum, which means in ordinary 



502 



