CAUSES OF DISEASE. 15 



Again, it is found that wheat and rye are affected with ergot, 

 and oats with a fungus growth, eminently fatal in its action on 

 the animal body; and that all kinds of forage by becoming rusty 

 acquire unhealthy properties, infected with cryptogamic plants 

 belonging to Urcdo or Puccinia species, or mouldy — blue-mould 

 — when attacked by the Macor muccclo. — (See Fleming's Sanitary 

 Science and Police on this point.) 



Of the bad effects of grass in rainy seasons, when it is loaded 

 with watery particles, numerous instances of tympanitis, diarrhoea, 

 and dysentery of a fatal nature, particularly among sheep, are 

 witnessed during wet years. 



But if the season be too dry, forage becomes hard, innutritious, 

 and indigestible from want of moisture as one of its consti- 

 tuents ; causing constipation, impactions, with their attendant 

 conditions of the body, unthriftiness and debility, leading 

 on to anaemia, and even death. In young cattle particularly, 

 this condition of the pastures, at first giving rise to indigestion, 

 induces, if long continued, a mal-condition of the osseous system, 

 whereby the bones become fragile or brittle, with stiffness of 

 the joints and liability to spontaneous fractures. In some parts 

 of Scotland a similar condition of the skeleton is brought about 

 by feeding young cattle on turnips grown on land highly dressed 

 with the phosphates, and urinary calculi are not uncommon in 

 animals highly fed on cakes and other artificial food. 



Food may be excessive or deficient in quantity. Tlie more 

 common effects of food partaken of in excessive quantities are 

 colics, enteritis, impactions, and ruptures. As a rule, we find 

 that animals partake of food in quantities sufficient to satisfy 

 appetite and maintain health ; but there are exceptions to this, 

 and we find some, particularly horses, habitually greedy in their 

 desire for food, eating voraciously, hurriedly, and masticating 

 imperfectly. Others again are voracious from accidental long- 

 fasting, and the evil consequences of this kind of feeding are a 

 source of great loss to the horseowner, and of great anxiety to 

 the veterinary surgeon, as most of the fatal cases of disease of 

 the digestive organs arise from this cause. To avoid such loss, 

 a little forethought would go a long way. If a horse be 

 habitually greedy, it should be made to take the edge off 

 its appetite by an allowance of hay before its corn, then be fed 

 sparingly on the latter, and the quantity which is generally 



