Arizona republican., 1891-05-22
A Doctor of Laws on Hog Cholera.

Hog cholera is due to feeding on sour swill, grain or corn distillery slop, the essence of the sourness being a vinegar which is formed in the food after the alcoholic fermentation has had its run. The kinship of alcohol and vinegar is very close, as all distillers know, their great art being to slave off the vinegar fermentation. Bakers know it also. They strive to keep their dough from being sour. The first effects of exclusive feeding on this sour or vinegar food is generally to produce constipation; next diarrhea, as the bowels, more or less paralyzed by the contact of the alcohol, vinegar, carbonic acid gas, etc., become distended, thickened, and pour off vary ing quantities of glairey, gluey or watery fluid that come mostly from the para lyzed cells coating the bowels.
 After a while the blood becomes in fected with the vinegar yeast, the red corpuscles adhesive and sticky, the fibrin filaments, that naturally are very deli cate and almost invisible under the mi croscope, become thickened into massive threads, which aggregate more or less, forming skeins, clots or plugs which catch on the valves of the heart. These fibrin filaments sometimes aggregate into long concretions that run for sev- eral inches, blocking up the blood vessels, sometimes plugging up the smaller yes sells completely. The heart meantime automatically beats harder to overcome the obstacle, and if the vessels are weak they rupture near the obstruction and the blood pours cat under the skin, if this is the site of the plug, and makes it look red almost like case of scarlet fe- yer Again, from the paralyZing infu. ence of the intestinal gases, there is, if the animal lives long enough, paralysis of the hind legs more or less complete. The hog will nunch up its back and draw the feet together underneath. In worse cases it will move by its forefeet while the hindfeet drag.
 Internal organs are subjected to inter- nal hemorthage from the same clots floating in the blood stream. If the ani- nal lives long enough there will be found in the lungs more or less breaking down and tubercular deposits due to the vine gar yeast collecting there from the blood stream. The appearances so much re- semble those in consumption in man that hog cholera has been termed form of quick consumption.
 It is not contagious save by contact and hogs living among the dung of infected hogs. Swine that have been fed on good sweet corn by the side of and in differ ent pens from swine fed on distillery slop, and suffering from hog cholera, have not taken it-according to Dr. Salisbury. And swine affected with it have been cured by giving them good sweet corn.
 If hogs everywhere were fed on good sound food hog cholera would be much less. If the food is cooked thorough ly the heat will destroy the alcohol plants and the vinegar plants, which some call bacilli, and there will be much less danger of the disease. The immunity of swine fed on sweet, sound food, some may say, is due to the re- sultant health of the animals resisting the disease. Be this as it may, those who are troubled with the hog cholera should feed only good sound sweet corn well steamed, and unless the cases are too far gone they will find the disease arrested. Of course the animals should be protect ed from cold.
 So long as swine, and kline, too, are fed on swill, distillery slop, dungy and dirty soured corn, or swill that is indi- gestible, with orange or lemon peel, trouble with the bowels must be expect ed, more or less severe according to cir cumstances. If those who are interested doubt these statements it is easy to prove or disprove them by trials &C., curately conducted. Feed healthy swine . on distillery slop and nothing else for three months, having other healthy swine alongside in adjacent pens fed With good sweet corn and water, and then note the results. ts.-Ephrsim Cutter, M. D., IL. D., in American Agricultur- ist.