68 ILLINOIS dairymen's ASSOCIATION. 



of animals, pushing them beyond the ordinary health standard, is detrimen- 

 tal to life aad especially ia patting on fat, It is a lower grade of life. It is 

 very easy to put on fat, but to put on braia and muscle and fibrous structure 

 another and higher organization requires not only exercise in the animal, 

 but a better class of food. 



Dr. Tefft : It has been my misfortune to examine many cases of 

 trichinosis iu hogs, and I find that different sections of the country are more 

 likely to be affected than others. I have made many examinations where 

 we have found perhaps one iu a thousand ; further south they are found 

 one in fifty, one in ten and so on. Hogs get trichincjsis by eating other hogs 

 and the chickens eat them, or the rats, and the cats eat the rats and any an- 

 imal that eats another affected in that way, surely become trichinosed. 



Dr. Detmers : You may ask me where German hogs get their trichi- 

 nosis. In Germany they are compelled to bury their dead animals and they 

 do it, I tell you. The Germans are vary economical people, they don't throw 

 away anything; what they think is not good to eat themselves, after they 

 kill their hogs every year, they give to the pigs, the pigs get the offal. That 

 is the principal way in which trichinosis is perpetuated in Germany. So in 

 France the pigs ar^ remarkably free from trichinosis. The Frenchman is 

 still more economical than the German; where the Germans throw it away 

 the Frenchman prepares it in some way and makes it palatable and eats it 

 himself. The most dangerous source of trichinosis is in the slaughter-houses 

 of the butchers and the rendering establishments. The lard which is made 

 into swine-butter, often is full of disease germs, and the heat that the lard is 

 subjected to is not enouajh to kill the living things that will be in it. I have 

 examined such lard, and I have found bacteria in it, and I have found some 

 other things, I don't need to mention. 



Mr Dexter : It is claimed by people who ought to know, that the an- 

 imal organization known as trichinosis is never found in the fat of the living 

 hog. 



Dr. Detmers : I have examined a great many thousand hogs and I 

 must say I have seldom or really never made a special examination of the 

 fat parts, because I knew that they were not there. But incidentally I have 

 examined some of the fat parts and I never found them there. There are 

 certain places in the body where they are, if anywhere, that is in the muscles 

 of the larynx and the muscles of the diaphragm. These animals seem to 

 possess some instinct ; when they come to the fat they stop about one-eighth 

 of an inch from the line between the fat and the lean. I find hogs coming 

 from counties where they never had swine plague, for instance from Dakota, 

 I found only one trichinaed, and I am quite sure that was a new comer, 

 either belonging to Illinois or Iowa. I found none in the Minnesota hogs ; 

 Wisconsin was wholly free, only in the southwestern part. Some counties 

 in Iowa had very few; Central Iowa and Central Illinois and Michigan are 

 pretty bad. 



Dr. Mills : Bacteria do not occur in fat but they may get into the 

 rendered fat, where the whole hog was rendered or thrown into the tank. 

 Than of course the hog was affected with bacteria ; the bacteria can be found 

 in the lard. Then there occurs a worm in the kidney fat, or close to it. 



