TREATMENT OF ROT. 



•217 



_country, that an effectual remedy for rot had been dis- 

 ►vered by the Dutch, but this was quite unfounded, 

 cure ever having been hit upon for this sweeping 

 malady ; indeed, a cure is fairly out of the question ; 

 its prevention and palliation, but not its eradication, 

 being all that we can hope for. Sundry plausible plans 

 of treatment have, however, at one time or another 

 been contrived, some of them, in all conscience, harmless 

 enough, but others again as well adapted for the de- 

 struction of the animal, as the removal of the disease. 

 As fluke worms have usually been reckoned the cause 

 of rot, so the treatment has principally consisted in at- 

 tempts to effect their extermination. With this view, 

 Sir George Steuart Mackenzie of Coule, in defiance of 

 all preconceived medical opinion, advocated, in his 

 work on /SAcep, published in 1809, the employment of 

 mercury to stay the progress of rot, and in the same 

 work, or one very like it, as lately published anony- 

 mously by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful 

 Knowledge, under the title of the Mountain Shepherd's 

 Manual, the utility of this dangerous procedure is as 

 firmly maintained. At the same time Sir George, 

 though rather in the dark as to the real nature of the 

 disease, admits, in both editions, that tubercles exist in 

 rot, especially in the lungs. Now, if he had inquired 

 of any medical person what drug ought, when tubercles 

 are present, of all others to be avoided, he would have 

 found that medicine to be mercury. The administra- 

 tion of it therefore in rot, no matter what may be the 

 form or mode in which it is exhibited, will to a certainty 

 aggravate the symptoms, and shorten life. If, for the 

 sake of doing something, you will endeavour to remove 



