SOME ACCOUNT OF A SWINE PESTILENCE. 683 
healthy and grew fat, until the sixth week, when he became 
unwell, vomited a greenish-looking mucus, and died on the 
third day from the time he first showed symptoms of disease. 
Two more dogs, both belonging to Mr. Woulf Denderline, of 
Aurora, were also chained near the pens, and fed on diseased 
meat. One continued healthy until the fifth week, when he 
refused to eat, vomited a greenish fluid, had diarrhoea, and 
died on the sixth day from the time he was first attacked. 
The other dog continued well until the fourth week, when he 
was taken with vomiting ; no diarrhoea was observed, and on 
the third day after, he died. Two more dogs, belonging 
to Mr. John Buffington, were chained at the pens, and fed on 
diseased meat. One of them died in the third week, with 
similar symptoms to the first mentioned. The other became 
out of healtli on the fourth week. The owner thinking he 
was going to die, had him removed, and fed on different food. 
He gradually recovered, though it was with difficulty he 
could walk for more than a month afterwards. I saw him 
three weeks after he had been removed from the pens. On 
making him get up, he would stand with his head down, his 
body drawn up, his back arched, and in attempting to walk 
■would put one foot an inch or so beyond the other. One of 
the men who attended the hogs informed Dr. Sutton that 
during the sixteen years he had been employed in this manner, 
he always kept a dog chained near the pens, which he fed on 
the flesh of the hogs that died, and this food never before 
injured his dogs. 
From the very infectious character of this epizootic, the 
question may be asked. Could this disease be communicated 
to the human system ? Dr. Sutton is of opinion, that there 
is no evidence that this disease among swine can be com- 
municated to the human subject. The men who attend 
these animals at the distilleries have spent nearly their whole 
time for months together, surrounded by hundreds of 
diseased hogs, and yet among these men at all the distilleries 
he could hear from, there was no unusual sickness. Also 
the soap-boilers and their assistants, who were constantly 
handling the diseased hogs, and breathing the effluvia 
arising from their putrefying bodies, often intolerably 
offensive, do not appear to have been affected. While 
examining the diseased hogs, Dr. Sutton was several times 
wounded ; but the wounds readily healed, and there was no 
unusual inflammation. 
The possible origin of the disease was another point 
inquired into by Dr. Sutton ; and although his researches 
were not so satisfactory in this respect, we think it right to 
give them in full. He found on inquiry that, on Juna ij h* 
