316 PLEURO-PNEUMONIA. 



of administering medicine, with the symptoms under his 

 eyes, he had never found out. Gentlemen then began to 

 consider whether heaving flanks, panting and painful cough, 

 were really the commencement of the disorder. They now 

 had time to review their former proceedings, and to find 

 out they had been quite wrong. In the quiet of their 

 studies they found leisure to recal, and to ponder over the 

 symptoms ; and when the cattle were absent, they found 

 out that they had attempted to relieve the disorder, only 

 after it had become confirmed. The first stage during 

 which the complaint was easiest to attack, and most readily 

 to be conquered, they had entirely neglected ; and this led 

 them to reflect upon the nature of the disorder which, though 

 they still regarded as febrile, they now were content to view 

 as typhoid, and even putrescent in its later stages. 



Pleuro-pneumonia is a disease, in the first stages of a 

 remarkably active character, but soon becoming virulently 

 typhoid. It has no set beginning. There is no first chord 

 struck, like to the overture of a Christmas pantomime, in- 

 variably the same, and always forcible, but the first stage 

 steals upon us, and can come from every possible point. 

 With young stock at grass, it is frequently announced by 

 constant battles or by precocious desires. Bulling out of 

 season is no unusual sign with cows in the shed. The ani- 

 mal, from being remarkably quiet, may in the first stage of 

 pleuro-pneumonia become restless and excitable, striking 

 at her neighbours with her horns, or jumping about at the 

 slightest sound. Often the owner is surprised by an un- 

 common yield of milk, but more often he is disappointed 

 by an evident falling off in the quantity given, especially in 

 the morning. Heat of the skin, and warmth at the base of 

 one of the horns, is no unusual commencement ; neither is 

 coldness of the parts about the tail, and particularly of one 

 or more teats, with heat, or even tenderness, of the bag. 

 A refusal to eat commonly is the first symptom, but not 

 usually a ravenous and unscrupulous appetite is the same. 

 Some cows suddenly grow very picky or nice in their feed- 

 ing ; others become quite the reverse, and they will gobble 

 up filth : in short, any change in the customary habits 

 or ordinary behaviour of an animal, when pleuro-pneumonia 

 is known to be abroad, should be immediately attended to. 



