MODERN FARRIER. 341 



25. FOG-SICKKESS. 



When cattle are put into a field of young clover 

 or rich grass, especially if they have previously been 

 kept on poor or dry fodder, they are apt to eat vo- 

 raciously of their new repast, and the young succu- 

 lent food, when received into the stomach, soon 

 ferments, and produces such a quantity of air, as to 

 swell the stomach to a violent and dangerous degree. 

 Cattle thus affected are said to be over- fed, hove, or 

 hlown ; or the affection of the stomach thus pro- 

 duced is called over-feeding, or sometimes fog-sick- 

 ness. If not speedily relieved, the animafs stom.ach 

 not unfrequently bursts, from the inability to eva- 

 cuate the accumulated air ; for there seems, in these 

 cases, to be a constriction of the gullet, so that the 

 air cannot escape upwards, while the number of 

 stomachs, and the spasmodic contraction produced 

 by the unusual distention, prevents its passage by 

 the anus. 



The necessity of speedily relieving the animal, 

 prompted th.e employment of vv^hat must at first 

 have been considered as a very desperate remedy ; 

 namely, stabbing the animal. An opening is made 

 with a sharp pen-knife into the paunch, in the thin 

 part between the last rib and the buckle bone ; and 

 through this the air rapidly escapes. Sometimes 

 the barrel of a quill is inserted into the Mound to 

 prevent its closing before all the air that is produced 

 during the fermentation of the food has escaped. 



Stabbing the animal is a remedy that should not 

 be liad recourse to but on the most urgent necessity; 

 as the wound can seldom be made with such nicety 

 as not to wound some im.portant organ, especially 

 some large blood-vessel. Indeed frequently the dis- 

 tension of the stomach, and consequently of the 

 skin and muscles of the belly is so great, that the 

 moment the knife is introduced, a dreadful rent 



