12 Veterinary Medicine. 



organic debris, are the natural homes of various pathogenic 

 microbes, such as those of ague, anthrax, milk sickness, actino- 

 mycosis and yellow fever. Well drained sandy or gravelly soils 

 are usually healthy, unless they contain a great excess of decom- 

 posing organic matter. Again soils with an excess of alkaline cr 

 other mineral matter may prove deleterious, and those on the 

 magnesian limestone often harbor the poison of goitre, and cretin- 

 ism, and favor the occurrence of urinary calculus. Faulty food 

 and feeding in the domestic animals are chargeable with many 

 diseases. Stock often fall off in condition, in the hands of one 

 feeder, when the same food given with regularity and judgment 

 by a more careful feeder would keep them in the highest health. 

 Hay and grain which is musty and filled with cryptogams and 

 their products, are common causes of disorder of the stomach, the 

 kidneys, the nervous system or of general nutrition. Smut and 

 ergot at certain stages of their growth or grown under given con- 

 ditions cause nervous disorders, abortions, and gangrene of the 

 extremity. A long list of vegetable poisons may mix with 

 fodders, and animal poisons with the food of the Carnivora. A 

 number of standard fodders may be poisonous at certain stages of 

 growth, as partially ripened perennial rye grass, millet, Hun- 

 garian grass, vetches, etc. Water and deprivation of water are 

 fertile causes of illness. Ruminants cannot chew the cud when 

 deprived of water, hence impaction of the first and even of the 

 third stomach with fermentations, tympany and other disorders. 

 Horses suffer more from a full drink of water after a feed of 

 grain, the unchanged albuminoids being carried on into the in- 

 testines, and both gastric and intestinal indigestion induced. 

 Sheep suffer fatal fermentations after drinking the alkaline water 

 of the Plains ; cattle have diarrhoea and dysentery from seleni- 

 tions, or from stagnant and putrid water ; and the water from the 

 dolomite is the usual channel of the goitre poison. Certain germs 

 like the plasmodia of malaria, and comma bacillus have their 

 natural home in impure water, and others like anthrax bacillus 

 survive in the mud and silt at the bottom of wells, ponds, and 

 rivers and enter the system in the water. Compulsory rest in a 

 stall often induces torpor of liver and bowels, general muscular 

 debility, and fatty degeneration especiall}^ of the liver and heart. 

 A few months of the swill feed, hot atmosphere and absolute rest 



