Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1903-10-13
new HOG DISEASE
SOUTHEASTERN IOWA PoRKERs
EXHIBIT STRANGE SYMPTOMS
OF DEADLY DISEASE.
Bureau of Animal Industry Washing
ton, .. c., Has Issued Report Based
Upon investigations Recently Made
Similar to Cholera.

Wapello county hog growers will be
interested in a report which has been
published by the Bureau OF Animal in
dustry at Washington. D. c., concern
ing new disease greatly resembling
the cholera which seems to have its
origin in The southwest part of Iowa.
A number of pigs weighing from fif-
teen to forty pounds were sent to
Washington several weeks ago where
the Investigations have been carried
on.
The report states that there was no
trouble in perpetuating the disease by
transferring it from one animal to an
other, and it was found that the di-
sease is highly contagious, healthy
pigs that were allowed to come in con-
tact with the sick animals invariably
becoming sick themselves within the
usual period of incubation. The di-
sease cannot be communicated to any
other animals than hogs.
First Symptoms.
The first symptoms noticed are that
the pig is slightly indisposed; there
is loss of appetite and listlessness, but
as rule nothing else on the first day.
BY the second day of visible illness
the animal is usually very sick, hollow
in tanks and has a staggering gait
There may or may not be diarrhoea,
and the feces are frequently blood
stained. Almost without exception
the eyes are sore and the lids glued to-
gether. The symptoms just enumerat-
ed become gradually more pronounced
until the death of the animal which
takes place as rule within seven days
after the appearance of the initial
symptoms and approximately two
weeks after the first exposure to in
| lection.
AT times the kidney is intensely con-
gested with all the glomeruli being
visible as minute. deep red points,
while at others it is as a whole not
congested, but exhibits in its cortex
very dark hemorrhagic spots.
From the above described lessons
and symptoms it win be seen that
| this disease is apparently identical in
all particulars with the acute type of
hog cholera, and that it is produced
without the aid OF the hog cholera
! bacillus.
One of the scientists who investigat-
ed the case sums up the result of his
| Investigations as follows:
"The fact that this particular type
| of hemorrhagic hog cholera is SO sim
| liar in both symptoms and LESSONS to
| the ordinary acute hog cholera sup
/ posed to be caused by the hog cholera
bacillus and that, by our methods of in.
4 oculation, without the presence of hog
1 al, al hoa Wv Nj
4 duced case of chronic hog cholera,
4 have led us to suspect that possibly
4 in all outbreaks of hog cholera there
! is some other agent besides the hog
cholera bacillus at work, and that in
/ those cases of acute disease, where the
hog cholera bacillus is found we have
i to do, not with pure infection, but
with mixed infection by hog cholera
bacilli and the organisms which are
responsible for the disease which we
i have just described. In fact virulent
hog cholera bacilli have been isolated
from hogs in which the disease had
4 been produced by incubation with in
4 fective material in which the absence
of the bacilli had been proved by fill
i tration, by culture and by the inocula
/, ton Of rabbits or guinea pigs.
i Means of Prevention.
eff such supposition is well founded
lit is quite evident what an Important
bearing it must have upon the proven
ton and treatment of hog cholera, ant
we hope to be able to decide this point
positively when the experiments now
under way have been completed"
The spread of this disease may be
prevented by the measures usually eli
fective in dealing with ordinary hos
cholera-the isolation of sick animals
and distinction of all infected lots
by carbolic acid and line Details O
special methods of treatment will BIZ
given later.