DISEASES OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 35 



speak. They want medicine and you cannot get along without 

 giving them medicine, whether they need it or not. It is some- 

 thing that must be given them at any rate. When that man has 

 told me what he is feeding I know why the hair looks rough. 

 The hair of the animal should be the farmer's thermometer. 

 The horse is not getting enough food in the system to make the 

 hair grow and look well. The muscles are going, the blood is 

 going, the nervous system is all going, right on the same line. 

 I might say to that man, ''John, you have got to change your 

 food, your animal is actually starving; while it is getting an 

 abundance to eat it is not being fed, it is filled but not fed." 

 Sometimes I will say to him, "Have you got any wheat bran? 

 I am going to put you up some medicine and it will be bitter and 

 I want you to mix that up with some wheat bran so the horse 

 will eat it." I insist upon it and he gets the bran, and the medi- 

 cine is put into the bran, four or six quarts, as the case may be. 

 A month later he will say, "Doctor, I never saw anything work 

 better than that medicine." The wheat bran balanced the horse's 

 ration. The little medicine was simply to tone up the weakened 

 digestion so that it might assimilate the food. When the hair 

 got plenty of food it was nourished and began to look sleek. The 

 nerve was nourished, the blood was supplied. Here is where 

 the condimental food men benefit. The basis of their foods, if 

 they are of good quality, is something that is rich in protein, 

 another name for blood making, nerve making, hair making 

 material. When they can induce a man to buy linseed oil meal 

 at from twelve to twenty dollars per hundred, with a little salt, 

 a little gentian, and a little of some other elements put into it, 

 just what the animals would seek out in the pasture, with a little 

 charcoal added, it is largely to their advantage. The man would 

 have had no need of condiments if he had simply balanced the 

 ration. The farmers should study on these lines. The experi- 

 ment stations are sending out bulletins, and some of the farmers 

 are reading them and putting the knowledge obtained into prac- 

 tice. That man was a wise man who came seeking advice in the 

 beginning. All are not as wise as that. They will say, my 

 horse looks a little rough, but I will feed him better after a while. 

 It usually runs along until about March, when the snow begins 

 to go off, and then he thinks he had better begin to feed up his 

 team a little, and sometimes he does it with a vengeance. The 



