MEDICAL TREATMENT OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 495 



" ' First with assiduous care from winter keep, 

 Well foddered in the stalls, thy tender sheep; 

 Then spread with straw the bedding of thy fold, 

 With fern beneath to 'fend the bitter cold,'" 



The following letter to Dr. Randall is based on the experience 

 of one of the earliest and most successful breeders of English 

 sheep in America : — 



"Thorndale, Washington Hollow, N. Y., April 13, 1863. 

 " Dear Sir : — * * The puerperal fever has been known in 

 " this neighborhood since I first came here, though only to a lim- 

 *' ited extent during the last two seasons. * * * The disease 

 " more generally affects middle-aged ewes, and ewes producing or 

 " carrying twins. It does not select those lowest in flesh ; .hence 

 " the farmers, as a class, are unwilling to believe that feed can 

 '* remedy it. It generally shows itself from four or five to ten 

 *' days before lambing. * * * The treatment which my shep- 

 " herd has followed, and with good success, — saving sixteen out 

 "of twenty sick, in 1859, — has been to separate the sick ewe at 

 " once from the flock and give a dose of two ounces Epsom salts, 

 *' two to three ounces molasses, one dram of niter, mixed with a 

 " pint of warm linseed gruel. The object is to open the bowels, 

 " and should the above not operate in eight or ten hours, it should 

 *' be repeated. After that, the niter and molasses are given night 

 '' and morning in an ordinary quart bottle of gruel, until there is 

 " an abatement of the fever, when the niter is discontinued. Fre- 

 " quently, in fact, generally, after they have been down three or 

 '■^ four days, — if they live so long, — the brown discharge which has 

 *' been noticed passing from the vagina, becomes putrid, showing 

 " that the foetus is dead. In such cases a small quantity of bella- 

 " donna — applied dry on the end of the finger — is applied to the 

 '■'■ mouth of the womb every hour until it is sufficiently relaxed to 

 *' allow of the removal of the decaying mass. After that has 

 '* has been done, the womb is thoroughly syringed with warm 

 '* water, to which milk is sometimes added. The ewe's position 

 *' is made as comfortable as possible, and always changed once or 

 " twice a day. Where the ewe brings forth her young alive she 

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