Fortunately, the pig is subject to comparatively few serious diseases--save swine fever, swine erysipelas, and very occasionally anthrax, which are contagious or infectious, and all in the special charts of the veterinary department of the Board of Agriculture, and within the contagious Diseases Animals Acts. Prior to the stamping out of Foot and Mouth Disease or apthous fever and rabies, pigs suffered from these contagious and infectious diseases, particularly the former of the two, which caused immense losses, especially of young pigs, during the latter half of the past century. Of the other ailments to which pig flesh is heir, the majority and the chief of them are mainly due to that want of knowledge or care in the feeding and in the housing of the pigs which renders them more susceptible to the sudden changes in the temperature or to the inclemency of the season. In former chapters some, if not all, of these ailments have been referred to, but it may be more convenient to our readers to include in one chapter a brief description of the ailments and the remedies and means of prevention. SWINE FEVER Some thirty years since the losses from this disease were of so serious a nature that the Board of Agriculture determined to attempt to stamp it out, as they had succeeded in stamping out pleura pneumonia in cattle, and foot and mouth disease. The success of their efforts was not at all commensurate with the outlay. The failure was attributed to many causes; amongst them the want of a complete knowledge of the disease, the impossibility of diagnosing it during the life of the patient, the absence of sympathy on the part of the local veterinary surgeons owing to certain steps taken by the then Veterinary Adviser of the Board, to which further reference is now inadvisable, and to the general opposition of pig-keepers who had as little faith in many of the post mortems and their results as in the power of the authorities to stamp out the disease which under various names had been more or less common in the country so long as they could remember. Doubts were also passed on the infectivity or contagiousness of swine fever, or as it was variously termed red soldier, spots, etc. This disbelief was probably due in part to the fact that some of the external symptoms of swine fever, swine erysipelas, and heart disease, such as discoloration of the skin were of a similar character. In some instances this redness of the skin, which was looked upon as a sure sign that the pig had died from swine fever, did not prove to be infectious, as no other cases followed amongst the in-contact pigs. This led to the general belief that swine fever was not necessarily infectious. Dissatisfaction with the arbitrary manner in which the restrictions in movement, etc., were carried out did not mend matters, nor help to render the efforts of the Board more successful.