204 DISEASES OF SHEEP. 



given. Two ounces of Epsom salts, and no ginger with them here, 

 should be administered every second hour until the sheep is well 

 purged, and the purging should be kept up by occasional doses of the 

 medicine for several days. 



The bowels having been well opened, the Fever Drink Recipe 

 (Nok 4, p. 201) should be given morning and night, and the animal 

 turned on shorter pasture, and a partial system of starvation for a 

 while adopted, and strict!}'- pursued. 



It sometimes happens, as we stated when a similar disease in 

 cattle was treated on, that the stage of inflammatory fever rapidly 

 passes, and one of a typhoid character, and with a tendency to de- 

 composition and putridity, succeeds. There is little chance of saving 

 the ox in this state; there is scarcely any of saving the sheep; fo^ 

 when he is once down, and foams at the mouth, and looks anxiously 

 at his sides, it is generally all over with him. If, however, anything 

 is attempted, the following tonic mixture is as good as any ; — 



RECIPE (No. 6). 

 Tonic Drink for Sheep.— Take gentian root, powdered, a drachm ; ginper, a scruple ; 

 spirit of nitrous ether, a draclun ; tincture of cardamoms, a drachm. ISIix, and give 

 in a little gruel. 



It is a good practice, when the disease once appears in a flock, to 

 bleed every sheep, and give each a dose of physic and change the 

 pasture. 



SECTION V. 



STURDV, GIDDINESS, OR WATER IN THE HEAD. 



This is a very singular, and also a very fatal disease. It commonly 

 attacks yearlings; a two or three-shear sheep is generally exempt 

 from it. The animal becomes dull; separates himself from the rest 

 of the flock; is frightened at the most trifling circumstance, and at 

 the least noise; he runs round and round, but always in one direc- 

 tion; holds his head on one side: if there is a brook in the field, he 

 stands upon its banks, poring over the running stream, and nodding 

 and staggering, until he frequently tumbles in ; or he breaks from his 

 fit of musing, and gallops wildly over the field, but with no certain 

 course, and with no determinate object, ^oon his appetite fails, or 

 he evidently feels so much inconvenience when he stoops to graze, 

 that he gives up eating altogether; and then he wastes rapidly away; 

 he seems to be half stupid, and at length dies a mere skeleton. 



The disease generally attacks the weakest of the flock. It is in 

 some measure connected with a peculiar state of the atmosphere. It 

 is most prevalent after a moist winter, and cold, and ungenial spring. 

 It usually begins in the spring, continues through the summer, and 

 disappears as the winter approaches. It is dependent partly on the 



