8 THE FARM DOCTOk 



SHEEP-POX,* 



Like small-pox of man, it is only known as a contagious 

 disease. The incubation or late?it period of the poison after 

 it enters the system, is from three to six days in summer, 

 and from ten to twelve in winter. Then there is loss of 

 appetite, dullness, dropping behind the flock, and stiffness of 

 the hind parts. This is followed by trembling, increased 

 temperature, very manifest on the bare and delicate parts of 

 the skin on which the eruption usually takes place, loss of 

 appetite and rumination, costiveness, red, weeping eyes, a 

 discharge from the nose, and the appearance of red patches 

 inside the limbs and along the abdomen. Soon minute red 

 points appear and increase to papules with a firm base, extend- 

 ing into the deeper parts of the skin. These are flat on the 

 summit (rarely pointed or indented), and become pale or clear 

 in the centre, from the effusion of liquid beneath the scurf skin, 

 with a red margin. With the appearance of the eruption, the 

 fever moderates, but increases again in three or four days with 

 the development and irritability of the vesicles. These may 

 remain individually distinct {discrete) in which case the attack 

 is mild, or they may run together into extensive patches 

 (co7ifliient) and the result is likely to be serious. The pocks 

 will even appear on the digestive or respiratory mucous mem- 

 brane. The eruption passes through the same course ot 

 exudation, suppuration, drying, and dropping off as in cow-pox. 

 The duration of the disease is three weeks or a month. The 

 mortality in the milder forms may not exceed seven per one 

 hundred, in the more severe it may destroy almost the whole 

 flock. But the losses of lambs by abortion, of wool, sight, 

 hearing, hoofs, digits, flesh, and general vigour, often render 

 recoveries anything but unmixed blessings. 



Treatment. — Keep in cool, dry well-aired, and littered sheds, 

 shelter from rain, and feed on roots, or, if very weak, on oat and 



