678 
SOME ACCOUNT OF A SWINE PESTILENCE. 
there is opened the widest sphere of experimental research, 
and is laid the soundest foundation for the construction of 
the positive of science, in matters relating to the laws and 
evidence of contagion. 
In pursuance of our previous observations, we this time 
offer some account of a remarkable epizootic amongst swine, 
in the United States of America. We had heard of the dis- 
ease incidentally, at our last issue, but not with sufficient 
accuracy of detail to warrant any description. This quarter, 
we are more fortunate. The North American Medico -Chirur- 
gical Review for May contains an able article on the subject, 
from the pen of Dr. George Sutton, of Aurora, Dearborn 
County, Indiana. Dr. Sutton has made a long series of re- 
searches on the epizootic, and has contributed a paper which 
will not soon be lost in the rolls of scientific history. From 
this paper we shall borrow in full all the information it affords, 
as to the origin, nature, and transmission of the new disease 
visitor. 
The epizootic we are about to describe has received a name. 
The lay public have called it the 6i Iiog- Cholera.” The term 
was chosen hastily, and rather as expressing the virulence and 
the mortality of the disorder, than the symptoms by which it 
is characterised. The vast territories over which the pest has 
swept may be conceived, when the fact is stated, that it has 
prevailed in the states of Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, 
Kew York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Maryland; 
spreading widely among the swine family whithersoever it 
went, and destroying so wholesale that one distiller alone, 
in Indiana, lost fourteen hundred hogs in one month, Sep- 
tember. 
Dr. Sutton very graphically depicts the malady. There 
was a premonitory stage, during which the hog appeared weak; 
his head drooped, and sometimes, in a few hours after these 
symptoms, diarrhoea commenced. There was frequently 
vomiting. In some cases, the discharges were serous and 
clay-coloured ; sometimes they were dark, sometimes they 
were muco-sanguineous, resembling the excreta of dysentery. 
The urine at first was generally small in quantity and high- 
coloured ; but as the animal recovered it became abundant 
and clear; by this sign the men who attended on the animals 
knew that convalescence was probable. In a large number 
of cases the respiratory organs seemed to be the parts most 
affected ; there was coughing, wheezing, and difficult respi- 
ration. In some instances the animal lost the power of 
squealing, and the larynx was diseased. There was frequently 
swelling of the tongue, and bleeding from the nose. In those 
