MODE OF ADMINISTERING MEDICINE. 299 



so as to form larger ducts. These enter the mesenteric glands 

 small glandular bodies attached to the mesentary after 

 the passage of which the chyle begins to change its color. 

 The lacteals still continue to unite and enlarge, and finally 

 terminate in the thoracic duct. In this the chyle is mingled 

 with the lymph secreted from a portion of the lymphatics 

 another exceedingly minute system of absorbent ducts, which 

 open on the internal and external surfaces of the whole 

 system. From the thoracic duct, the chyle is conveyed to 

 the heart, and enters into circulation as blood." 



MODE OF INTRODUCING MEDICINES INTO THE STOMACHS 

 OF SHEEP. Owing to the peculiar arrangement and action 

 of the stomachs above described, solids, and even fluids if 

 forced down the throat rapidly, fall on the pillars or lips of the 

 esophagean canal with enough momentum to cause them to 

 open, so that the swallowed substance falls into the paunch : 

 and the comparatively insensible walls or coatings of this 

 stomach are scarcely acted upon, to any sensible degree, by 

 medicines, when they are administered in the proper and 

 usual quantities. Consequently, let him who administers 

 medicines in " balls," or in thick, heavy forms, or pours down 

 fluid ones with haste and violence through the usual horn, 

 remember that he is, in most cases, substantially throwing 

 away his medicine, or putting it where its effects will not be 

 felt in time to be of any service in acute cases. The reader 

 is requested to keep these facts distinctly in recollection 

 whenever the administration of remedies is spoken of in this 

 volume ; for there can be no possible use of constantly 

 repeating the caution. 



HOOVE. When sheep are suddenly turned from poor 

 pastures on fresh clover, turnips, or other unusually succulent 

 food, and allowed to fill themselves to excess, its fermentation 

 in the first stomach or paunch causes an elimination of gas, 

 which sometimes distends that organ almost to bursting. It 

 presses against the diaphragm (midriff) so that the lungs 

 can not be filled with air, and thereby directly produces 

 suffocation ; or the blood no longer circulates through the 

 paunch, and is determined to the head, producing stupor and 

 death. 



It is most egregious folly in all cases, to make any such 

 sudden change in feed. If dried-off ewes, for example, are to 

 be put on rank clover, they should, at first, be admitted to it 



