180 SHEEP diseases: 



Now, if these foods are not supplemented by others of a nutri- 

 tive character disastrous results must and do follow ; the class 

 of diseases produced being those in which lowered vitality and 

 debility with dropsies — such as water braxy, shell sickness, 

 vanquish or trembles — are marked. The lowering influences of 

 such foods are aggravated by low temperature and exposure to 

 cold winds, particularly east or north-east winds, but of the 

 latter more anon. Excessive quantities of turnips are most 

 injurious when artificial manures, especially salines, have been 

 too generously used and there has been long-continued wet 

 weather. Moisture within, moisture without, moisture above, 

 below and around, will tell its tale ; will dilute and impoverish 

 the blood and macerate and soften the tissues; will disintegrate 

 the cell elements and render them incapable of performing the 

 functions of organic life ; moreover, it will affect the blood cells 

 and the walls of the blood-vessels injuriously. 



While swedes are more nutritious than white turnips they 

 too may be overdone; and owing to the quantity of sugar they 

 contain they produce fatty changes in the liver and as a result 

 thereof deficiency in blood supply, especially of red blood, with a 

 tendency to throwing out of fluids of an albuminous character 

 into the tissues, constituting " turnip braxy." 



I have seen sheep (especially lambing ewes) that have been 

 fed ad libitum on swedes, without any complementary food, 

 die in dozens, their carcasses laden with fat but not a teacupful 

 of blood in the veins of any one of them ; and in the case of 

 breeding ewes, I have seen the recently born lambs the subjects 

 of internal dropsies. I have again seen ewes fed in the same 

 way, on swedes which have been forced with artificial manure, 

 especially phosphatic manure, die in dozens from milk fever 

 (so called in some districts) while theii' lambs have succumbed 

 to joint-ill; and some years ago, Mr Robertson, late of Kelso 

 (the late Professor Robertson), assured me that he had, by way 

 of experiment, produced these diseases at will. 



Foods rich in carbohydrates and fatty matters are, in ex- 

 cess, extremely injurious bringing about, as they do, the changes 

 already noticed in the liver; and if sugar is superabundant 

 diarrhoea or scour. Moreover the blood becomes over-laden 

 with their products and highly plastic from imperfect oxidation, 

 and congestion is the result. 



Foods rich in flesh-forming material {'proteids) are, in too 

 great quantity, also highly injurious tending, as they do, to an 

 undue accumulation of albumen and fibrinous elements in the 

 blood, thus taxing the cells to their utmost to appropriate the 

 nutritive matter offered to them and so overjjowering them, 

 as it were, as to prevent their normal function : in this way 

 imperfectly formed tissue is produced and the result is the 



