—This disease is limited in its action to pigs. Its cause is not definitely known. It is recognized by a peculiar contraction of the diaphragm in young pigs. While the pig may eat fairly well the disturbance is associated with digestion. Such patients like to lie around and take very little exercise. The disease is more common where one kind of food like corn is fed. The old common method was to cut off the ear. The common practice now is to give a purgative so as to relieve the stomach and bowels of accumulated material. The food should be changed and from 1 to 2 tablespoonfuls of Epsom salts should be given. The jerking movement of the muscles may be relieved or stopped by using laudanum, say, four drops to 1 or 2 teaspoonfuls of aromatic spirits of ammonia in a half pint of water.
TICK FEVER.
—See [Texas Fever].
TRICHINOSIS.
—A disease caused by the trichina, a minute worm that affects people, hogs and rats. People become affected with the disease from raw or partly cooked pork. These worms are killed by thorough cooking or by the process of hot pickling and curing meat products.
Hogs become affected through eating offal and rats about the slaughterhouses. Hogs that are fed on green grass and other wholesome food, free from these minute worms, are less likely to have trichinæ embedded in their flesh and muscles. Hogs do not seem to be bothered with the trichinæ, but people suffer very severely, as both soreness in the muscles and fever result.
A few days after eating the trichinæ, the worms multiply very rapidly in the digestive tract, from which they migrate to other parts of the body and work their way through the tissues. There is no remedy in way of treatment when affected. Prevention is the one cure. Inasmuch as five to ten per cent of hogs are affected, it is advisable that all pork or ham be eaten only after most thorough cooking.
TUBERCULOSIS.
—Tuberculosis is a disease resulting from the growth of tubercle bacteria in the tissues of the animal. The bacteria, or germs, of tuberculosis, usually gain entrance to the organs of the body by being taken in with the food. Sometimes they penetrate through the membranes in the throat and get into the glands of the head. Sometimes they are taken into the digestive tract, where they pass through the walls of the intestines into the lymph channels and are carried through the large lymph vessel into the blood circulation. In some cases it would seem that the bacteria get into the lungs on particles of dust that are inhaled.
