Accessory Causes. These are especially those conditions which favor the transmission of the germ from animal to animal. They include the reprehensible habit of allowing swine to run at large so that herd mingles with herd; the freedom to wander along the lines of railroad by which hogs are carried, and where the infected excretions fall on the ground; the scattering of infected litter or manure from a car or boat; the use of the same cars, boats or trucks for the conveyance of infected and sound pigs in succession, without intermediate disinfection; the use of the same loading banks, chutes, runways, yards, pens and feeding and watering troughs by strange pigs from all sources in succession, without constant disinfection; the purchase of stock swine at public markets; the return of swine from public fairs and exhibitions; the feeding and watering of pigs on the line of streams that have drained pig pens or pastures higher up; the use for pigs of premises that have harbored infected ones at an earlier (even distant) date; the supply of food or litter from barns where pigs have recently died; the admission to the pens or yards of butchers, dealers or others who are likely to carry infection on their persons; the admission even of wagons, dogs or other animals, including birds, tame and wild, which are liable to carry infection. Of all birds the buzzard is the most to be shunned as having presumably just come from infected carrion, but barnyard fowl and small birds that feed from the same trough with the pig are to be feared as well. The same remark applies to rats and mice, squirrels, skunks, woodchucks and rabbits which may easily carry the infection on their paws. If the infection is near, flies and other insects, in the warm season, will convey it for some distance from herd to herd. A common cause is the feeding of swine about abattoirs where they devour the offal and waste in a raw condition. Another is the feeding of boarding house, hotel or other kitchen slops, raw, or without the most exhaustive precautions in the way of cooking. Many outbreaks can be traced in this way to the consumption by the animals of the products of infected swine. Some indeed are fostered by the utter neglect of the parties in charge of an infected herd, in leaving the infected carcasses exposed so that they are eaten by wandering hogs, or portions are carried away by buzzards, carrion crows, dogs and other animals. In some cases a strong wind will carry the infection on dust, straw or other light object into sound herds at a distance. The introduction into a hitherto healthy herd of an apparently sound pig may be the occasion of a deadly outbreak. The strange new pig may have already had the disease, and in a condition of immunity, may without hurt to itself, carry the germ which becomes so fatal to the susceptible.
This susceptibility is one of the most important factors. It may be inherent in a given family or strain of blood. It may be enhanced by a constitutional weakness, engendered by too close breeding, by breeding from the young and immature, or from the old and worn out. It may be favored by a general debility from starvation, faulty or injudicious feeding, as exclusive feeding on corn (maize), an unbalanced ration, feeding cotton seed, irregular feeding, etc. It may result from parasitism, as round worms in the lungs, bowels, muscles, fat, kidneys or liver, from trichinosis, from cysticerci, echinococci, or from distomatosis. These not only lessen the force of constitutional and phagocytic resistance, but they also in many cases open the way for the entrance of the microbe by the wounds which they inflict. Perhaps nothing operates more effectively in this way than the attacks of other pathogenic microbes. The treatment of the domestic hog is often such that it would almost appear as if it were designed to destroy health and vitality. He is used to clear up the soiled and spoiled provender which has been rejected by other animals. Decayed vegetables and flesh of all kinds, which is no longer fit for other use, is supposed to be good for him and is furnished raw. Worse still, this is conveyed in barrels that are never washed, but are sent for each new supply reeking with abominations which render them a nuisance on the highway. It is left standing till wanted in these barrels, or in still larger receptacles, which are never emptied nor cleaned, but are allowed in the hottest weather, to continue a hotbed of the foulest fermentations. On a smaller scale the kitchen swill barrel becomes a similar centre of decomposition. Even at the creamery and cheese factory the surplus or waste products often remain in a common tank breeding larvæ, toxins and ptomaines, before they are fed to the hogs. In the hog pen, or yard, corn in the ear is thrown on the ground, already filthy with the solid and liquid excretions and is eaten with the rotting, if not infecting, filth in which it has been rolled. From grubbing in this filth with his snout, the pig plunges the latter in the liquid food in his trough and too often he gets his feet into the food as well, and further charges it with the injurious ferments. Again the kitchen swill is liable to contain various inorganic poisons and notably the carbonates and bicarbonates of potash and soda which are used to excess in the form of powdered soaps and, as shown by experiment, are deadly poisons to pigs.
The gastro-intestinal disorders caused by these poisons; (it may be botulism from stale or decomposing flesh, fish or fowl, the poisoning by mouldy bread or musty grain, or meal, or by the toxins of the many and varied saprophytic fermentations), often prove as deadly as outbreaks of genuine hog cholera, and are habitually mistaken for them. They do not, however, as a rule extend beyond the particular herd which has been exposed to the faulty management, and introduce no risk of a general spreading infection. The careless owner suffers and adjacent herds escape, unless exposed to similar causes. But if the hog cholera germ is present these pave the way for its destructive advance and tend to enhance the mortality. It may even be that the combination of the two factors is a condition of the eruption of a severe attack. The faulty feeding or food or poison by itself could be resisted, and the comparatively non-virulent hog cholera bacillus might have been resisted, but with the weakened system and digestive apparatus, the microbe finds a specially inviting field in which it can multiply destructively, and where it can gather a virulence which will enable it to invade and sweep away herd after herd in a deadly epizoötic.
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; if sold in smaller lots they carry infection into every locality where they go, and along the route; if sold for slaughter, they still diffuse infection through the herds that receive their butcher and kitchen trimmings.
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. Th. Smith, to whom we owe more than to any one else the identification of the germ, gives seven varieties, which showed well-marked distinctions in their morphology, in their modes of growth on culture media, in the amount of gas they respectively produced in a glucose bouillon, or in their pathogenesis for rabbits. One of these modified germs which has largely parted with its virulence for pigs and some other animals, may under specially favorable conditions, resume its former potency and proceed on a new career of infection.
Lesions in the Acute or Septicæmic Form. The skin and subcutaneous fat are the seats of diffuse blotches or spots of a deep red varying from dark purple to light red, confined it may be to the inner sides of the arms and thighs the belly, the ears, eyelids, and muzzle, or it may be all but uniformly diffused over the body. When pressed so as to expel the blood, the greater part of the surface may be momentarily whitened, but red points remain representing the minute extravasations. Under the microscope the red points show tortuous and enlarged capillaries with here and there a rupture and minute clot. The visible mucosæ may show similar petechiæ, as may also the serosæ of the chest, cranium and abdomen. In the latter blood extravasations are liable to be more extensive. The spleen and lymph glands (particularly those of the bowels and omentum, the sublumbar and subdorsal regions) are usually enlarged, gorged with blood and softened. Many of the lymph glands may escape, and in others the congestion is largely confined to the cortical portion. The lungs may show petechiæ and even extensive hæmorrhages into their substance. The kidneys may show petechiæ in the glomeruli, the medullary substance, the papillæ or the pelvic mucosa, or there may be larger circumscribed hæmorrhages.
The stomach in its greater curvature especially is usually deeply congested and petechiated, with small submucous extravasations, and these conditions are liable to be still more marked in the small intestines and especially in the large, which may have a dark red or port wine hue. Blood may be present in clots among the contents. Necrotic ulcers are absent.
Lesions in the Protracted and Chronic Forms. The lesions of the skin are usually less extensive than in the acute type, and may be almost entirely absent. The lymph glands are enlarged and congested, though the discoloration may be largely confined to the cortical layer. The spleen is as a rule normal in size. The liver is firm, but it may show softening of the secreting acini and encrease of the fibrous framework. Petechiæ or circumscribed hæmorrhages may or may not be present on or under the serosæ or in the tissues.
The characteristic lesions belong to the gastric-intestinal organs. Congestions and ulcers may be found on the gastric mucosa, on that of the small intestine, and rectum, but they are above all common on the ileocæcal valve, cæcum and first half of the colon. In the earlier stages of these lesions the mucosa and submucosa are the seat of a congestion and exudation, but later the round button-like ulcer usually stands out prominently with its necrotic centre dirty white, brown or black, and composed of superposed layers, the whole resting on a congested and thickened submucosa. This contains small round and giant cells and may show considerable encrease in connective tissue. The ulcers may be seated on the agminated or solitary glands but do not show the same predilection for these parts which is seen in typhoid fever.
Incubation. This varies according to the dose and susceptibility from two or three to as many as thirty days. With the short incubation the disease tends to assume its most acute and deadly type, while the prolonged incubation bespeaks a milder form. During ordinary outbreaks from six to fourteen days represent the average interval between exposure and the onset of active symptoms. During the extreme heats of summer and the excessive cold of midwinter in our northern states incubation tends to be shortened.