i 9 4 VETERINARY LECTURES 



smelting works, but it is most frequently seen on pastures where 

 town rubbish has been spread, or where the scrapings of paint- 

 tins and tea-lead have been deposited; sometimes it is due to the 

 animal getting to tins of white lead and eating the contents. I have 

 seen three cases from this latter cause. The salts of lead are very 

 sweet, and cattle eat them with great relish. Treatment is generally 

 of very little avail ; 6o-drop doses of sulphuric acid, largely diluted 

 with cold water, might be pumped into the stomach, to act on the 

 lead chemically, and form the insoluble sulphate of lead ; and this 

 should be followed up by |-pint doses of raw linseed oil every six 

 or eight hours. In chronic lead-poisoning the animal slowly dwindles 

 away, blue lines being noticed round the guns. Thirty-drop doses 

 of sulphuric acid, with i drachm of sulphate of quinine, given in 

 i quart of cold water twice a day, is in such cases useful. 



303. Vegetable Poisons. — Plants of a poisonous nature are 

 many, and, considering their distribution, it is astonishing that there are 

 not more fatal cases. Some of the most common and well-known 

 poisonous plants are as follows : Hemlock (Conium maculatum) ; 

 Fool's parsley (JEthusa cynapium) ; Water hemlock, or cowbane 

 (Cicutavirosa) ; Water dropwort, or dead tongue (Mnanthe crocata) ; 

 Deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) ; Foxglove (Digitalis 

 purpurea) ; Monkshood (Aconitum napellus) ; Yew-tree (Taxu- 

 baccata) ; Rhododendron (Ponticum). The half-dried twigs of the 

 yew-tree and rhododendron, as already stated, are more acute 

 and dangerous than the green branches (par. 250). The water 

 dropwort, or dead tongue, is sometimes mistaken for the water 

 hemlock, or cowbane ; both plants are, however, poisonous to cattle, 

 and great care should be taken, when ditches are being cleaned out, 

 that the roots of these plants are gathered, dried and burnt, as, when 

 half dried, cattle are very fond of them. The green leaf of the 

 foxglove, in the winter months, when the ground is covered with 

 snow, is also dangerous to sheep, and should be cut down and 

 removed from pastures on which sheep are grazing. Vegetable 

 poisons usually prove fatal on account of the peculiar arrangement of 

 the stomach compartments of cattle and sheep, which permits of 



