DISEASES OF THE BLOOD. 205 



and to arrive at a correct diagnosis, all the circumstances must 

 be reviewed. It may be that the sheep have had too many turnips, 

 grown in a sunless season, or that one kind of food may have been 

 given too long, or, as previously suggested, some piroplasm is 

 at work. 



Treatment. Change the food and change the fold or place. 

 Feed generously on a mixed diet. Cake and corn should be among 

 the articles given. For medicine, table salt (chloride of sodium), 

 sulphate of iron, and ground gentian root. A dose approximating 

 to thirty grains of the finely-powdered sulphate of iron, forty 

 grains of salt, and ninety grains of gentian, should be estimated 

 for as each sheep's portion daily. It should be well mixed with 

 cake dust or other food in a fine state of division, as the administra- 

 tion of drugs in the trough is, at best, uncertain, and we wish to 

 avoid overdosing a few and depriving others of their share. An 

 insufficient number of troughs contributes to this trouble. These 

 drugs may give place, in a week or ten days, to two drams each 

 of powdered cinchona bark, and fenugraec, continuing the salt. 

 By such treatment many will be saved, but pernicious anaemia, 

 unrecognised in the early stage often proves fatal, and the reader 

 is warned in this, as in other sheep diseases, of the necessity of 

 constant watchfulness over the flock. 



RED WATER. 



Sheep men do not always mean the same thing as cattle men 

 when they use the term " red water. " They refer to a red accumula- 

 tion of dropsical fluid in the abdomen, which is only discovered 

 after death. There are several causes probably. Microscopic 

 examination of the fluid has shown the presence of organisms of 

 the kind that cause heart-water and other serious effusions, but 

 it is not known how they enter. 



The symptoms of this malady are not very easily distinguished 

 from other forms of dropsy, and the nature of the disease is not 

 known until a dead animal is opened. 



Treatment. Removal to fresh ground, mineral and vegetable 

 tonics as advised for anaemia, which see. 



RED WATER. 



The passing of red-coloured urine as in cattle with the disease 

 known by the above name. This discolouration is the diagnostic 

 symptom. 



Treatment. A purgative such as a dram or two of aloes, half 

 an ounce of bicarbonate of potash, and three to six ounces of salts. 

 Purgative doses of salt (chloride of sodium) which in many districts 

 are favoured for cattle with this malady, should not be given to 

 sheep, as they are specially sensitive to salt in anything but 



p 



