8 BULLETIN 260, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
our large packing houses where such diseased portions are tanked at 
temperatures which insure the destruction of all parasites of any sort. 
On the farm it may be accomplished by boiling any viscera before 
feeding them to dogs or other animals. The viscera should never 
be thrown out on the fields. The practice is objectionable of itself; 
it furnishes a breeding place for flies and is in every respect insani- 
tary and improper. Viscera and carcasses, if not cooked and fed, 
should be burned, buried with lime, or disposed of in such a manner 
that they can not be devoured by dogs. 
An additional method of preventing hydatid disease, and the one 
that should be emphasized here, is for the owners of dogs to keep 
them up, and to have stray dogs disposed of by the proper authorities. 
A person should have substantially the same supervision of his dog's 
food, for his own sake and for the sake of the dog, that he has of his 
children's food. It is dangerous as well as unwholesome to allow dogs 
to forage for a living. A man who does not properly feed his dogs 
has a poor claim to their care and ownership. Dogs should be kept 
out of human habitations and treated in general with more regard to 
their possibilities as disease carriers. 
Hydatid disease is fairly common in Europe. It is quite common in 
Iceland, India, Eastern Siberia, Algeria, Tunis, Australia, and some 
South American countries. It has been permitted to assume the pro- 
portions of a serious menace in Australia, and 3,000 cases of hydatid 
disease in human beings were reported from there between the years 
1861 and 1882. In at least two South American countries hydatids 
are so common that the sanitary authorities have issued illustrated 
placards warning against the disease. 
Over 240 cases of hydatid in man have been recorded from the 
United States up to 1902. Over most of the United States hydatids 
are comparatively infrequent in domestic animals, but they are not 
so rare that they are curiosities to meat inspectors. Numerous con- 
demnations of organs and parts of carcasses are reported every year 
from the various meat-packing establishments under Federal inspec- 
tion. Some recent abattoir figures show an alarming prevalence of 
this disease in domestic animals in some parts of this country, notably 
in certain localities in Virginia^ Arkansas, and Oklahoma; and the 
prevalence of hydatids in domestic animals is an index of the danger 
to which people are exposed. It is, moreover, desirable that we apply 
preventive measures before a larger list of cases in man makes both 
curative and preventive measures imperative. The bare fact that 
hydatids occur at all in the United States is of itself a cogent argu- 
ment for the suppression of the dog nuisance as a measure necessary 
for the public welfare. 
