POLL-EVIL> RADICAL CURE BY SUPPURATION. lyj 



Mix, and apply the same two or three times a day, gently rubbing the part ls 

 much as the animal can bear. Give also at the same time the 



Alterative Ball. 



Aloes, 4 drachms, 

 Castile soap, 2 drachms, 

 Calomel, half a drachm. 



Mix with mucilage, and give one every third day, provided the embrocation ia 

 applied so long. 



During these applications, a cooling regimen should be observed, the feeds 

 being reduced to half the usual quantity of oats, and ultimately discontinued 

 altogether. There will be no propriety in clothing up the patient, nor need 

 he be exposed to the cold air, if it prevails. When the disorder has been 

 brought on by simple compression of the ear-band, and is recent, I have never 

 known the foregoing treatment to fail ; and in cases of vigorous constitutions, 

 the swelling, heat, and tension have been reduced so quickly (i. e. in four or 

 five days) as to leave certain careless observers in doubt whetner the animal 

 had really laboured under a genuine attack of poll-evil. 



Remove the halter, and if the animal be put to work, contrive to keep back 

 the ear-band. A good and valuable embrocation will be found in simple vine- 

 gar three or four times a day, or the sediment of very stale beer. Old verjuice 

 answers the same end ; and all this kind of embrocation must be laid on warm, 

 by means of cloths soaked and applied repeatedly. 



♦+* The same treatment and observations will apply to all the other species 

 of abscess in its milder state, fistula, warbles, quittor ; but of these 1 shall 

 speak more particularly under their respective heads of information. 



Second method of cure. — Very few cases present themselves to recollection 

 of even recent poll-evil, that would admit of being completely dispersed, and 

 a radical cure effected, by any means whatever; and it is due to candour to 

 acknowledge, that some of the most stubborn attacks were found to bave re- 

 lapsed after a v^hile, which proved that the cure so effected to all appearance 

 was not radically good, but had leit a violent predisposition to renew its rava- 

 ges afresh. Probably, the time of inflicting the injury had not been accurate- 

 ly marked, nor its degree ingenuously reported to the owners in those cases 

 of relapse. 



However this be, when the disorder is found to baffle the endeavours em- 

 ployed to disperse it, the whole course of proceedings must be changed, as be- 

 fore hinted in the concluding sentence of my general observations on this to- 

 pic. Instead of putting back the swelling by those means, let us pursue a 

 direct contrary course, in order to bring it forward : the mode of feeding must 

 oe changed along with the medicines that now become proper to procure sup- 

 puration, or a discharge of the offensive matter; a full habit being mainly 

 conducive thereto, and proving how closely connected is this disease with a 

 gross habit of body, which in all fleshy animals superinduces a diseased habit, 

 vulgarly but accurately termed "full of humours." After having found use- 

 less your efforts to disperse the tumour, or. mayhap, finding at the first view 

 of it, or by the first touch, certain symptoms that prove it ought never to be 

 dispersed, the practitioner will of course seriously set about permitting, or 

 forcing, the offensive matter to escape. Every hour's delay in putting this^ 

 resolve into practice serves but to render the ultimate cure still more difllcub 

 ond hazardous; for the evil is all this while extending its baleful effects in- 

 wards and sidewise, and forming around H. in every direction, the fistulous 

 !'.ase or csestus before spoken of, wh'ch is a film, ur skin-like substance formi^d 

 12 



