212 THE SHEPHERD'S MANUAL. 



suffer from quickened breathing, a hot, dry skin, an unquenchable 

 thirst, redness of the eyes, and a discharge from the nostrils. 

 At this period the eruption occurs on the body just as in the hu- 

 man small-pox. The bare skin under the arm-pits shows the first 

 indications of the eruption. Pustules or pimples surrounded with 

 a red ring, (the areola), appear, and gradually after three days, 

 come to a head, and take on a white appearance. It is at this 

 stage of the disease that the matter is collected and preserved for 

 the purposes of inoculation. The symptoms decrease at this stage 

 and the sheep improve. The pustules dry up and form scales or 

 scabs which fall off and lea re in their places "pits" or marks. 

 But it may be that these pimples run together or become " conflu- 

 ent " and ulcerate. If this happens, the sheep almost invariably 

 die. Otherwise the recovery is rapid. 



Treatment by medicine is entirely unavailing. Good nursing 

 of the pattents, and the use of sustaining stimulants with laxative 

 and demulcent food includes all that can be done. Linseed-meal, 

 rice-meal, and oat-meal, made into drinks, and given warm, with a 

 small quantity of sugar, or molasses and ginger, will be sufficient 

 in the shape of food. Pure soft water made slightly warm, and 

 acidulated with a few drops of aromatic sulphuric acid, should be 

 given for drink. 



Hopeless cases should be ended at once. If at the last stage the 

 symptoms become worse, and the pimples, instead of becoming 

 brown and drying up, ulcerate, and run together in chains, the 

 animal should be killed and buried in a deep pit with plenty of 

 lime thrown on the carcass. Every portion of the dead animal 

 will convey infection, and in no case should the wool be taken 

 from it, unless it be at once tub-washed in boiling hot soap-suds. 



On the appearance of the disease in a neighborhood, the unaf- 

 fected sheep should be inoculated. A quantity of the matter from 

 the white pimples is kept in bottles and diluted with water to the 

 consistency of cream. A needle mounted in a wooden handie- 

 st shoemaker's curved awl will answer the purpose excellently 

 fe dipped into the fluid and is thrust beneath the skin of the fleshy 

 part of the tail. This rarely fails to communicate the disease 

 which is so slight as seldom to interfere with the feeding of the 

 flock. In a paper published in the Journal of the Royal Agricul- 

 tural Society of England, Vol. XXV, Part 2, 1864, written by a 

 gentleman who had had charge of flocks of Merinos varying from 

 a few thousand up to twenty-five thousand, in Russia, and who 

 always practiced inoculation, the author states that although the 

 sheep under his charge were constantly exposed to contagion 



