292 VETERINARY LECTURES 



frequently seen with thick legs, and occasionally the sheath becomes 

 swollen and pendulous. This is generally due to want of condition 

 or to giving them too much boiled food of a ' slushy ' nature, such as 

 boiled turnips or potatoes and cut corn sheaves. Soft unconditioned 

 hay or oats will have a similar effect. If the food be at fault it 

 should be changed at once and the sheath well washed out with soap 

 and water ; then the administration of iron tonics, combined with 

 suitable diuretics, will soon remedy the mischief (par. 1073, No. I.). 

 The best treatment, however, is to clip the hair off the animal, 

 and "feed with well-conditioned corn and hay. 



457. Epidemic or Epizootic diseases are more or less affections 

 of the blood, caused by small solid bodies, called microbes, bacteria, 

 or bacilli, which grow and multiply with great rapidity in the blood, 

 and produce characteristic diseases, just as turnip seed and clover 

 seed produce turnips and clover respectively— plants that are very 

 distinctive from one another. 



458. Anthrax or Splenic Apoplexy.— Although this is a 

 disease of the blood, it has already been noticed under ' Digestive 

 Organs,' Part II. {par. 324). 



459. Black-Quarter, or Quarter-Ill, is due to a minute germ, 

 which locates itself in some of the tissues of the body, where it 

 increases in number with great rapidity, causing in due course 

 morbid alteration of the tissues of the part affected, the generation 

 and evolution of gases, with subsequent derangement of the blood 

 and consequent death. It attacks various parts of the body, par- 

 ticularly the limbs, loins, and shoulders. It is most frequently seen in 

 young animals from six months to two years old, but even those 

 older are by no means exempt from attack. As a rule, the best 

 thrivers, or those in the most forward condition, are the first to be 

 affected. In young stock it is invariably fatal, while aged animals 

 occasionally make good recoveries. Black-quarter is not now of 

 nearly so common occurrence in the North of England as it was 

 some years ago. This is owing to the better sanitation and improved 

 mode of feeding now adopted, specially to the fact of not allowing 



