Hog cholera

“ Many a case of supposed Hog Cholera is due to worms irritating and producing inflammation of the intestines, followed by diarrhoea. A person not familiar with the disease calls this “hog cholera.” In other cases, hogs which are fed swills from restaurants, hotels, etc., containing soap, washing powders, small particles of glass, etc., will die with symptoms leading a person to think they had Hog Cholera, but if a thorough investigation is made the true cause of death can easily be discovered. ”

“ Even if it should be shown that hog cholera is at long intervals developed from a ‘sport’ of the usually harmless bacillus coli commune, the fact remains that its great extensions and the resulting fatality are due to the contagion alone, so that extinction remains the true watchword of success and economy. ”

“ Swine Plague
Symptoms.—Extensive inflammation of the lungs, by which it can be distinguished from hog cholera. There is coughing and labored, painful and oppressed breathing.
It frequently comes as a pneumonia or an inflammation of the lungs and pleural membrane. The animal is in a sleepy and even comatose condition much of the time. If it walks it staggers. The skin reddens in a marked degree and the bowels become constipated. This disease, though not nearly so common as hog cholera is usually very fatal. Preventive measures, as indicated for hog cholera, are all important. ”

“ The possible introduction of the disease into the pens by people, dogs, birds and other carriers of the disease should be guarded against, especially if cholera is present in the neighborhood. The exchange of help at threshing and shredding time with a neighbor who has hog-cholera on his farm is a common method of distributing the infection. It is not advisable to allow a stranger to enter your hog-houses and yards, unless his shoes are first disinfected. ”

“ On the contrary, as you should know, the incubation of hog cholera being nine days, I consulted the shipping dates of the animals and knew that they had been healthy when shipped.
"Has it ever entered your mind that the railroads are largely responsible for the spread of cholera? Did you ever hear of a railroad fumigating or disinfecting a car which had carried cholera? ”

“ They live almost exclusively upon carrion or decomposing animal matter, and in this manner aid in the prevention of diseases that might result from the presence of such filth. They may, however, be the cause of indirectly spreading hog cholera where animals that have died from this disease are left unburied or unburned. ”

“ They lie down in the mud; and in a short time one can see the steam beginning to rise from their bodies in volumes, increasing their already prostrate condition by the consequent inhalation of the noxious gas thus thrown off from the system; the blood becomes impregnated with poison; the various functions of the body are thereby impaired; and disease will inevitably be developed in one form or another. Should the disease, known as the hog cholera, prevail in the neighborhood, the chances are very greatly in favor of their being attacked by it, and consequently perishing. ”

“ As the result of some recently conducted experiments on feeding hogs, it is announced by the Cornell University experiment station that fully twenty-five per cent of the diseases which are supposed by the farmer to be hog cholera, or some other of the infectious diseases which attack hogs, are simply due to unhealthy food or foul surroundings. ”

“ The failure to stamp out hog cholera in England and America has been largely chargeable on the appointment of laymen to do the work of the expert, and no less so on the attempt to deal with the disease in hogs in transit or in the market rather than in the farm where they have been raised or kept. ”

“ With state, county or municipal measures for the extinction of hog cholera, treatment is to be condemned, as calculated to encrease and spread the infection. But until the states can be educated out of the past wasteful system, into economical measures of extinction, the swine breeders are entitled to whatever salvage they can secure through therapeutics. For acute cases there is no hope. For the chronic a clean, dry, comfortable pen, well disinfected, and a moderate diet of varied and laxative food are essential. ”

“ Conditions of feed and keep may favor the development and spread of hog cholera. They may decrease resistance and increase susceptibility, but cannot originally cause the disease. It is a rather common experience that hogs kept closely housed and fed, especially with such foods as corn, offer less resistance than do other hogs. In our vaccine work we frequently find hogs of this type which die readily under inoculation with blood of low grade virulence. Hogs of hardier type may become slightly sick or not sick at all with inoculation from the same infectious material. ”

“ Finally other domestic animals may bring in an infection which becomes manifested by symptoms similar to those of hog cholera, and which if really different, yet serves to pave the way for such an outbreak. Galtier’s remarkable experience with a pneumo-enteritis in sheep, introduced into five separate flocks by infected pigs from the same market, is significant in this respect. It is further significant that the hog cholera bacillus is a very protean microbe. ”

“ PREVENTION AND CURE OF HOG CHOLERA.
We are aware of the fact that the talent, ingenuity and skill of man has been employed in searching out some remedy as a preventative and cure for this lamentable disease; and there have been some preventions used that have been valuable in that direction. For instance, the simple article called ashes is a healthy article for stock, which many people use, but it never cured one case of Cholera. I have no doubt but it has been beneficial for the general health of hogs. Of all remedies, simple ones when they will cure are the best ”

“ Pigeons, dogs, cows and buzzards that travel about the neighborhood and feed in hog yards and on the carcasses of cholera hogs may distribute the disease. Because of the active part that dogs, birds and surface drainage take in the distribution of hog-cholera, the practice of allowing the carcasses of dead hogs to lie on the ground and decompose is responsible for a large percentage of the hog-cholera outbreaks. ”

“ Anti-hog-cholera serum is produced by injecting directly, or indirectly, into the blood-vessels of an immune hog a large quantity of cholera virus, secured by bleeding a hog that is fatally sick with acute cholera, and bleeding the injected animal after it has completely recovered from the injection. The injection of the cholera blood is for the purpose of stimulating the production of antibodies by the body tissues, and raising the protective properties of the immune hog's blood. ”

“ The ultra-visible virus is eliminated from the body of the cholera hog with the body secretions and excretions. Healthy hogs contract the disease by eating feed or drinking water that is infected with the virus. There are other methods of infection, but field and experimental data show that hog-cholera is commonly produced by taking the germs into the body with food and drinking water. ”

“ Age is an important predisposing factor. Young hogs are most susceptible to cholera, and this susceptibility can be greatly increased by giving them crowded, filthy quarters. Infection with lice, lung and intestinal worms, the feeding of an improper ration and sudden changes in the ration lower the natural resistance of a hog against disease. Pampered hogs usually develop acute cholera when exposed to this disease. ”

“ I have never seen Cholera bother hogs, where this Stephen's Remedy was used as above stated. You will ask, what is to be done where pigs have it? In answer to that, reader, just get a trough and put in the remedy, and pour the slop to their mother, and the milk will be just as effective to the pigs as the remedy is with the sow.
This Stephen's Remedy for Hog Cholera, if studied and observed, will be worth from $100.00 to $1,000.00 to every farmer or hog trader, where Cholera has ever been; and there is no trouble or expense to have the benefit of it. ”

“ I may add, as a prominent factor in the great modern extensions of hog cholera, the habitual aggregation of swine in large herds. This with the rapid steam transit of modern times, and the great aggregations of hogs in one common market, probably contributes more than anything else to the extraordinary diffusion of the infection. By accident, purchase or otherwise, a large herd becomes infected, and the owner, knowing that delay is ruin, at once ships the apparently healthy animals to market; these infect anything they or their excretions come in contact with ”

“ Portable houses should be removed. The floors, walls of the house and fences should be first cleaned by scraping off the filth, and then sprayed with a three per cent water solution of a cresol or coal tar disinfectant to which sufficient lime has been added to make a thin whitewash. Three or four months of warm, sunny weather are sufficient to destroy the cholera infection in well-cleaned yards.
ANTI-HOG-CHOLERA SERUM.—The credit of developing the first and at present the only reliable anti-hog-cholera serum and method of vaccination belongs to Drs. ”

“ They showed that the injection of cultivations of the microbe causing hog cholera produces the effects of attenuated virus after being sterilized by heat, at any rate in the case of pigeons. (It was, however, accepted before that time that micro-organisms generate products which are deadly to themselves and are capable of arresting their growth, a fact which has also long been known in connection with fermentation organisms.) ”

“ Those who see irresistible motives for dismissing all idea of contagion, look, on the contrary, for the production of cholera, to sources, admitted from remote times to have a powerful influence on our systems, though invisible—though not to be detected by the ingenuity of man, and though proved to exist only by their effects.
Many who do not believe that cholera can be propagated by contagion under ordinary circumstances, have still a strong impression that by crowding patients together, as in hospitals or in a ship, the disease may acquire contagious properties. ”

“ This is not unfrequently the case on board some of our emigrant ships, when hundreds of human [p.36] beings are stowed away between decks without the means of efficient ventilation, disinfection, or other mode of expelling the noxious principle. Though the germ of disease may be ever on board, it does not vegetate and come forth and rapidly acquire its activity, vigor and power, unless the localizing influence vivify, foster and nurture its development. This is fully confirmed by the recent arrival of two steamers with cholera on board. ”

“ The truth of this statement is seen in single districts where parts or single houses exist on the summit and others lie low.
Another feature which is found in every epidemic is the falling off of the disease in the neighborhood of and on mountain-ranges. The Himalayan Mountains, those of Lebanon and the Alps, have always formed the places of refuge for fugitives from cholera. Now and then an epidemic occurs in the mountains; these exceptions will be dealt with later. The immunity, or the slight susceptibility, of mountain ranges for cholera is witnessed in India as plainly as it is in Europe. ”

“ I am not aware that even M. Pariset, the medical chief of quarantine in France, ever supposed this disease to have been imported, and to this hour the cause of its appearance remains in as much obscurity among the Savans of Paris, as that of the epidemic cholera.
Considering all the evidence on the subject of cholera in India, in Russia, Prussia, and Austria, one cannot help feeling greatly astonished on perceiving that Dr. Macmichael (p. 31 of his pamphlet) insinuates that the spreading of the disease in Europe has been owing to the views of the subject taken by the medical men of India. ”

“ Care must be taken by the authorities and by the community to take measures for the treatment of the sick. But the difficult point in the prevention of cholera is the predisposition in time and place. It is no use urging, as the contagionists do, that we can not change the nature of the soil. One of the established facts concerning epidemics of cholera is the tendency of the disease to rage in those quarters where the greatest filth prevails. All towns which have been provided with good drainage and water-supply have lost their susceptibility to cholera. ”

“ Before such admission can be held necessary, it must be shown that the disease which attacked the nurse was not derived from places outside the Hospital, which he was allowed to visit, or from the cause diffused in the air of the neighbourhood, in less or greater concentration, and manifesting its powers relatively to the degree of concentration, and the force of pre-disposing co-operating agents.
It would be unsafe to assert that cholera can never, under any circumstances become contagious ”

“ The eggs of the tape-worm must undoubtedly pass down the sewers into the Thames, but it by no means follows that everybody who drinks a glass of the water should swallow one of the eggs. As regards the morbid matter of cholera, many other circumstances, besides the quantity of it which is present in a river at different periods of the epidemic, must influence the chances of its being swallowed, such as its remaining in a butt or other vessel till it is decomposed or devoured by animalcules, or its merely settling to the bottom and remaining there. ”