BEAXY. 405 



grenous septiCcTmia prevails and is known in Scotland by 

 the term hlack spaud, a gangrenous form of disease seen in 

 lambs under a week old, and characterised by the skin 

 and subcutaneous tissues surrounding and extending from the 

 umbilicus, becoming slightly swollen and assuming a dark 

 purple colour. The discoloration and swelling are sometimes 

 in large patches, covering the lower parts of the abdomen, breast, 

 and sides, but more frequently they consist of one large diffuse 

 patch, embracing the regions mentioned, and extending to one 

 or both shoulders, hence the term black spaud (shoulder). 



This disease sometimes commits great havoc, the author having 

 known as many as ten score lambs being carried away at one 

 sheep farm in a few days. 



Etiology and Pathology. — If during the first few days of the 

 lamb's life, or before the umbilicus has completely closed, and a 

 hard eschar formed, the umbilical cord be brought into contact 

 with decomposing materials, both the germs and the products of 

 the septic process may gain entrance into the umbilical canal, and 

 there, acting upon its contents, set up the putrefactive process, 

 which, extending into the surrounding tissues, induces locally 

 congestion and thrombosis of the blood-vessels, characterised by 

 diffuse mulberry coloured patches, with or without suppuration of 

 the cord, and generally great and increasing prostration, and a 

 rapidly fatal collapse, death occurring in a few hours after attack. 



On many farms the sheep slaughtered for food are skinned in 

 the lambing sheds, the blood and offal allowed to remain on the 

 ground, the skins thrown across the beams of the roof to dry ; 

 and the skins of others which have died of disease or accident 

 are also brought there, and allowed to remain there, very often 

 until the next clipping season. 



From the foregoing observations it is evident that infection of 

 the umbilical cord by the products of putrid decompositions 

 which cover the floor of lambing grounds, particularly lambing 

 sheds, is the starting-point of the infection. 



Can it be wondered that lambs dropped in such an atmo- 

 sphere fail to escape the contamination ? 



Careful observers, whilst agreeing that permanent lambing 

 .sheds, contaminated as they necessarily must be by decompos- 

 ing materials, are the great cause of both black spaud and 

 joint-ill, state that both of these forms of septicaemia are 



