214 



A DICTIONARY. 



the first five years, suspected that the water 

 of his ponds, which was extremely filthy, 

 might be the cause of the mischief; he 

 therefore dug three wells upon his farm, and, 

 having fenced round the ponds to prevent 

 his cattle from drinldng there, caused them 

 to be supplied with the well-water in stone 

 troughs erected for the purpose ; and from 

 this moment his live stock began to thrive, 

 and the quality of the butter and cheese 

 made on his farm was greatly improved. 

 Li order to show," says the same author, 

 " that the accident of warping may arise 

 from a vitiated state of the digestive organs, 

 I will here notice a few circumstances tend- 

 ing to corroborate this opinion. In 1782, all 

 the cows in possession of farmer D'Euruse, 

 in Picardy, miscarried. The period at 

 which they warped was about the fourth or 

 fifth month. The accident was attributed 

 to the excessive heat of the preceding sum- 

 mer ; but, as the water they were in the 

 habit of drinking was extremely bad, and 

 they had been kept upon oat, wheat, and 

 and rye straw, it appears to me more prob- 

 able that the great quantity of straw they 

 were obliged to eat, in order to obtain suf- 

 ficient nourishment, and the injury sustained 

 by the third stomach, in expressing the fluid 

 parts of the masticated or ruminated mass, 

 together with the large quantity of water 

 they drank, while kept on this dry food, was 

 the real cause of their miscarrymg. 



" A farmer at Chareton, out of a dairy 

 of twenty-eight cows, had sixteen slip their 

 calves at different periods of gestation. 

 The summer had been very dry, and, during 

 the whole of this season, they had been 

 pastured in a muddy place, which was 

 flooded by the Seine. Here the cows were 

 generally up to their knees in mud and 

 water. In 1789, all the cows in a village 

 near Mantes miscarried. All the land in 

 this place was so stiff as to hold water for 

 some time; and, as a vast quantity of 

 rain fell that year, the pastures were for a 

 long time completely inundated, on which 

 account the grass became bad : this shows 

 that keeping cows on food that is deficient 

 in nutrition, and difficult of digestion, is 



one of the principal causes of miscarriage." 

 It is supposed that the sight of a slipped 

 calf, the smell of putrid animal substance, 

 is apt to produce warping. Some curious 

 cases of abortion which arc worthy of notice 

 happened in the dairy of a French farmer. 

 For thirty years his cows had been subject 

 to abortion. His cow-house was large and 

 well ventilated ; his cows were in apparent 

 health ; they were fed like others in the vil- 

 lage ; they drank the same water ; there 

 was nothing different in the pasture ; he 

 had changed his servants many times in the 

 course of thirty years ; he pulled down the 

 barn or cow-house, and built another, on a 

 different plan ; he even, agreeably to super- 

 stition, took away the aborted calf through 

 the window, that the curse of future abor- 

 tion might not be entailed on the cow that 

 passed over the same threshold. To make 

 all sure, he had broken through the wall at 

 the end of the cow-house, and opened a new 

 door. But still the trouble continued. 

 Several of his cows had died in the act of 

 abortion, and he had replaced them by others : 

 many had been sold, and their vacancies 

 filled up. He was advised to make a thor- 

 ough change. This had never occurred to 

 him ; but at once he saw the propriety of 

 the counsel. He sold every beast, and the 

 pest was stayed, and never appeared in his 

 new stock. This was owing, probably, to 

 sympathetic influence ; and the result of 

 such influence is as fatal as the direct con- 

 tagion." (See Youatt.) 



The usual symptoms preceding abortion 

 are a sudden filling of the udder, and a 

 loose, flabby, and sometimes swollen ap- 

 pearance of the genitals, which discharge a 

 Uttle red-colored fluid. The lancet and 

 medicine have been resorted to with very 

 little success. Both of them are decidedly in- 

 jurious ; the animal should be put into some 

 dry, sheltered place, by herself, and kept on 

 boiled mashes and gruel for a few days. 



Absorbents. — Medicines which are giv- 

 en in view of absorbing gas or neutralizing 

 acidity in the digestive caAdty. 



Absorbent Vessels. — (See Lacteals, 

 part first.) 



