448 SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



as far as the knowledge of the uninstructed practitioner will safely admit 

 of — and if, even in cases of constitutional disease, it should simply cause 

 him to do no hurt hy his interference, and prevent him from resorting to 

 some miserably ignorant empiric* — t?ic most important object, perhaps, 

 would be attained. It is infinitely safer in such diseases to rely on unaided 

 Nature to effect the cure, than to submit a sheep, or any other animal, to 

 the drugging and dosing of a person ignorant of the true nature of the 

 disease, and of the remedies which he employs. It is better to do too lit- 

 tle than to do too much ; and in all cases where it is not known what to do, 

 it is better to do not7ii?ig. 



Lord Weston, in a letter to Mr. Bischoff, says :t 



" I have little to say on the medical treatment of sheep ; my study is prevention by suffi- 

 cient wholesome food, with a constant and abundant supply of salt in every yard and every 



field When sheep are taken ill, there is little hope for them, and rarely any use in- 



administering medicines." 



If the latter portion of this remark is true among the educated, intelli- 

 gent and experienced veterinarians of England, how much more must it 

 be so among those destitute of even the first rudiments of veterinary sci- 

 ence ! In relation to some of the more serious constitutional maladies, af- 

 ter considerable experience and observation, I feel constrained to express 

 the opinion that the remark is, to a considerable extent, true. The sheep 

 is almost as unsatisfactory a patient to deal with, in some such cases, 

 as the hog, of which it is frequently said, with no great exaggeration, 

 " that if he is seriously sick he is sure to die, and the more you do 

 for him the sooner he will die ! " " Then why give a therapeutic system 

 at all in a class of diseases where it will do so little good 1 " In the first 

 place, the cases are perhaps few where judicious prescriptions will not 

 somewhat diminish the tendency to a fatal result ; but the great reason, 

 after all, is, that every man having a sick animal rvill dose and physic it, 

 or will permit some officious neighbar to do so, or will call in that most 

 dangerous of all epizootics, the cattle-doctor. It is therefore better in the 

 most hopeless cases, to give a few simple directions, based on sound med- 

 ical principles, which will not, at all events, aggravate the disease, and 

 which will tend to alleviate or suppress it, rather than to surrender the 

 helpless animal over to the additional tortures inflicted by ignorance and 

 quackery. Fortunate it is that well-managed sheep, in this country, are 

 so little subject to such diseases ! 



In classifying diseases, I shall depart from the system adopted by You- 

 att, Spooner, etc., who arrange them with reference to the parts of the sys- 

 tem they more especially attack, as, for example, " diseases of the brain," 



* The self matriculnted " cattle doctor '" is a decidedly interesting per? onajie. His qualifications are nn- 

 meroiis, and it is somewhat difficult to find them all brilliantly combined in the same person. He should 

 be the most ignorant man in the town, particularly in everythiup relating to the anatomy and physiology 

 of man or beast. He should be equally ignorant of the cliemiral and medicinal properties of nearly all the 

 drugs used by him. His prescriptions, to give them due potency, should consist of a great number of in- 

 gredients — a large portion of them bearing very "hard names." He should flank and fortify these, at leaet 

 in all difficult cases, with substances possessing rare occult virtues, entirely unknown to "human physi- 

 cians," such as the " blood of black cats," the " entrails of fowls," " human faices," simples culled under pe- 

 culiar circumstances — 



"Root of hemlock, digged i' the dark, 



* * * slips of yew, 



Slivered in the moon's eclipse." 



He should decidedly affect the mysterious, and should alwavs repel the attempted intrusions of ordinary 

 humanity— the profane vulgar— into the arcana of his high art. He should have half a dozen maladies, such 

 as " baked in the manyfolds," " overflow of the gall," " kidney disease." " rising of the lights, ' stramert 

 across the loin." etc., to which he can promptly assign all the ills which beasts are heir to. He shouia 

 never mistake a disease or « remedy. If the patient dies, it should invariably be in consequence oi a. 

 deviation from his directions I 

 t Bischofi', vol. ii. 

 (848) 



