CAUSES or ROT. 



207 



then either not deemed worthy of a moment's notice, 

 or, if considered, were swept at once, by the strong 

 current of prejudice, into the foul ocean of predeter- 

 mined disapproval. Opinions in cattle medicine were 

 at that time valued according to the prolixity of their 

 detail ; and the more improbable the dependence of 

 the effects upon the cause assigned, so much more was 

 its discoverer lauded, and in like proportion was the 

 chimerical fabric he had raised admired. Times are, 

 however, now happily changed ; that potent oculist, 

 the march of intellect, has cleared the film from the 

 public eye, and no one need, at present, be afraid to 

 state the unaspiring fact, that tubercles are the sole 

 and proximate cause of the disease called rot. 



The observations of the late Dr Coventry, already 

 quoted, would lead us to suppose that tubercles are of 

 rare occurrence in the lungs of sheep, but in refutation 

 of this assertion, I need only request the reader to take 

 a ramble through a butcher-market, and he will per- 

 ceive, even on cursory inspection, the fallacy of this 

 conclusion. What the state of the liver is which is 

 attended with flukes and hydatids, he has left us to 

 make out. Chronic hepatitis, which accompanies 

 tubercles in the liver, goes for nothing as a disease of 

 sheep, and therefore does not require a notice ; be- 

 sides, it is not rot, and is quite incompetent of itself to 

 cause it. As for the scurvy of which he speaks, he 

 evidently means the disease now generally known by 

 the name of Pining, but which, as it has no connexion 

 with rot, and has only become prevalent within the 

 last sixteen years, could not be very well known to 

 him. 



