Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1884-11-20

In his :. History of Animal Plaques"
Fleming says: .sOur earliest researches
begin with the land of Egypt as the in
evitable birthplace of plaques affecting
the inferior creatures, no less than
man. 1.-THE lower country is
annually exposed to far-spreading in
undations by the flooding of the Nile,
and the retiring sea leaves behind it a
reeking morass. which, owing to the
nature of the deposit left behind, to-
gather with the large amount of mois-
ture and the hot sun shedding its rays
direct upon it, shortly after becomes a
beautifully green plain, covered with
the rankest and most luxuriant vegeta-
ton and pools of stagnant. corrupted
water" Add to the above description
that the rich low-lands are shaded by
heavy growths of forest, protecting
from quick evaporation the reeking
pools beneath, and the description would
answer admirably for thousands of
miles of land along the Mississippi, the
Ohio, the Missouri, and their tributa-
ries 1t is in these rotting swamps and
steaming bottoms that swine-plague,
hog-cho1era, or whatever name it may
be called by, had its origin, and from
which it has spread in the last decade
westward to the Rockies and eastward
to the Atlantic, and has even been car
ried to England. In such regions as
these milk sickness has attacked hui
man beings, cattle, dogs, swine, and
other animals. In the last-named all
ment the cause has been clearly and
often traced to the use of water from
stagnant pools, sweltering under sum-
mer heat almost tropical in intensity.
Many circumstances serve to
strengthen the belief that the so-called
hog-cholera which has cost the farmers
of The States west of Ohio many mil
lions of dollars may be traced to a
starting-point in impure water, the
breeding place of vast myriads of ba-
cilli which, finding their way to the
system of the hog and there multiply
ing enormously, damned the veins and
arteries and stopped the circulation of
the blood. In very wet seasons the
heavy and frequent rains wash out the
ponds and swamps and keep the
streams full of swiftly-fowing water,
too cold to rthe growth of bacteria.
In 1879 an investigator said, in de-
scribing very fatal outbreak of So
called hog-cholera in Illinois, that the
winter was very cold and therefore I'M
favorable to the development of bacilli,
but soon after the sows narrowed in the
spring great number of young pigs
died of cholera. As soon, however, as
the heavy spring rains set in the dis
ease ceased to make much progress, so
that from May until August few new
cases and few deaths occurred. The
pouring rains washed away most of the
germs into the streams, and the cur
rent carried them off. In short, the
animals had pure water to drink.
The summers of 1882 and 1888 were
unfavorable to the growth of germs of
malaria, that of 1883 having been re-
markedly wet and cold. So completely
did swine-plague disappear that the
Department of Agriculture at Washing
ton requested, through the public
press, that any person knowing of the
existence of the malady would inform
the department of the location of the
animals affected. The former ravages
of the scourge were by some SO COM
pletely forgotten that some newspapers
declared that the tremendous losses in
Cured by farmers in the West a few
years before were chiefly in the imagin-
ations of the scientists. A single warm
and comparatively dry season has this
year sufficed to quicken into new life
germs of the distemper, which has APP
peared over wider area than it has
ever before been known to cover.
Doubtless like causes will produce SINH
lar effects, until farmers shall realize
that exemption from this extremely
contagious, infectious and fatal dis
ease is one of the mostimportant of the
many benefits to be derived from the
carrying out of a wise system
of drainage. Chicago Tribune.