DIARRIICEA, OR PURGING. 61 



CHAPTER Xllr 



DIARRHffiA, OR PURGING. 



Purging is produced by various causes ; by change of food, from 

 dry to green meat, or from short to luxuriant pasture ; by poisonous 

 plants, bad water, or unknown atmospheric agency. 



It is not always to be regarded as a disease, nor should the farmer 

 be always anxious to stop it. It may be an effort of nature to dis- 

 charge something that is injurious; it may exist while the beast 

 enjoys almost perfect health, and is even thriving. 



The farmer will not regard an occasional fit of purging ; he will 

 only attack it if it is violent, or if it continues too long. In the first 

 case it indicates some disordered state of the bowels, or the presence 

 of some offending matter in them, and he will endeavour to remedy 

 this ; not, as is too often done, by attempting to arrest the discharge 

 as speedily as he can — not by the exhibition of astringent medicine 

 — but b}'^ giving a mild dose of physic, in order to assist nature in 

 her effort to get rid of some evil. Nothing so much distinguishes 

 the man of good sense from the mere blunderer as the treatment of 

 purging. 



From half to three-quarters of a pound of Epsom salts should be 

 given witli the usual quantity of ginger. The next day he may pro- 

 bably administer a little astringent medicine. The following will be 

 effectual, and not too powerful : — 



RECIPE (No. 17). 

 ^strin (rent Drink.— Tnke prepared chalk, two ounces; oak bark, poivdcred, one 

 ounce; catecliu. powdured, half an ounce; opium, powdered, two scruples ; ginger, 

 powdered, two drachms. Mix, and give in a quart of warm gruel. 



In the second case also, when purging has long continued, and 

 the animal is beginning to become tliin and weak, the practitioner 

 must bepin with physic. There is probably some lurking cause of 

 intestinal irritation. Ho should give the quantity of Epsom sails just 

 recommended — or perhaps he will more prudently give from half a 

 pint to a pint of castor-oil. It will usually be a good practice to give 

 a rather smaller dose on the following day; and, after that, he may 

 safely have recourse to the astringents : the animal should be brought 

 into a cow-house or enclosed yard, where it can be sheltered from the 

 weather, and kept partly or altogether on dry meat. 



It is of great consequence that diarrhoea or simple purging should 

 be distinguished from another disease with which it is too often con- 

 founded. They are both characterized by purging. That which has 

 been just considered is the discharge of dung in too great quantity, 

 and in too fluid a form ; but that which will°form the subject of the 

 next chapter, dysentery, is the evacuation of the dung, mingled with 

 mucus, or mucus and blood. In diarrhoea the dung is voided in large 

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