SCROFULOUS DISEASE IN PIGS. 
263 
the requisite principles for nutrition; but these principles, 
surrounded by abundance of mucilage and fatty oil, require 
for their organs to be endowed with necessary power. The 
mother has this power in the required degree ; the males 
likewise. The mother yields the same principles in her milk 
to her young; but then they are rendered capable of easy 
absorption. The young pig sinks then under such alimenta- 
tion as requires a certain vital force for its digestion, an 
energy the young yet awhile does not possess ; so that the 
linseed, which was good food for the mother, becomes im- 
proper for the young animal. 
Linseed cake, when kept in a dark humid situation, gene- 
rates within it a sort of fungus (byssus), which may add some- 
what to its unwholesome effect. They are readily detectable 
through the microscope. Neither is there wanting in these 
cakes salts of potash, soda, lime, and magnesia, which may 
serve as excitants, and to repair in the organism salts of the 
same base eliminated by the secretions. Nor are they defective 
in the essential principles of nutrition, and rapid fattening ; 
all the objection to them consists in young pigs lacking the 
power of isolating the essential principles, and separating 
them from such as are inert. 
At the time we are feeding with linseed cake, we may give 
a portion of undecorticated rice grains, and other parasitic 
grains as well. On adult hogs rice does not appear to have very 
much influence, but on young pigs we have seen dropsy of 
the sheath under its use. It would be difficult to say this 
was the cause of it, though we have seen it appear with the 
rice, and disappear when such was not used. However this 
may be, chemical analysis proves that rice is capable of pro- 
moting fattening, on account of the abundance of carbon 
within its fecula, but that it does not nourish. 
Often do we observe that impure air, sedentary life, and 
privation of the sun^s rays, give rise to scrofulous disease. 
This is especially seen in the human subject, and in spite of 
healthful diet. 
The period at which females are put to the male is not 
without importance in the present inquiry. In the quarter 
where I have observed the scrofulous disease, the sow has 
been put to hog about June, parturition has taken place in 
October, and weaning in November or December. The pigs 
separated from their mother, exposed to humid cold, and 
badly sheltered, straying away to seek in vain over marshy 
plains nourishment which they do not find, and so, lacking 
organic power, sink at this early age. Not able to resist the 
powerful causes of destruction, they become attacked with 
