History of Animal Plagues. 341 



aromatic simple of the kind called carminative, and the carroway seed 

 is extremely well suited in all its qualities to that purpose. This will 

 invigorate the action of the stomachs, which appears evidently languid, 

 the stomachs themselves, as was above observed, participating in the 

 paralysis of the upper parts. 



' By vinous liquors, which are the other species of invigorating 

 medicines proper in the murrain, is meant any kind of fermented 

 liquors that contain vinous spirits. The late-acquired knowledge of the 

 efficacy of this kind of remedy in contagious and other fevers where 

 putrescence prevails, has furnished the means of aiding nature to resist 

 such diseases when the natural strength could not otherwise support the 

 vital economy against the elFects of them. The giving wine in our 

 country to the beasts in the murrain, would, however, be impracticable 

 on account of the expense, and perhaps good fermented malt liquor is 

 better adapted, on the whole, to the intention than wine. A proper 

 quantity, therefore, of ale that is not too new, or of that kind of malt 

 liquor called strong beer, should be given twice a day, and to render it 

 more cordial where greater symptoms of weakness appear, a proportion 

 of some distilled spirit should be added fo it. The kind called geneva 

 is the most cheap and easily obtained, and the ingredient, besides the 

 vinous spirit, being terebinthinate essential oils, are by no means im- 

 proper in this case. 



' The secondary intention of cure above mentioned, by the supply of 

 diet suitable to the disordered state of the digestive faculty in the mur- 

 rain, may be thus provided for : — The beasts may be fed on hay. so long 

 as it appears to agree with them. Though, as there is always a defect 

 of the saliva, and the lymphous juices of the stomach, as well as a con- 

 sequential weakness in the digestive ferment, it may be proper to mix 

 some proportion of green herbage with the dry fodder. But when the 

 hay or herbage cannot any longer be digested, as will be indicated by 

 the beasts' refusal of it, and their ceasing to chew the cud, it will be 

 requisite to have recourse to such other food, as is either fluid, and 

 consequently does not demand the dilution of the saliva and lymph, or 

 such as is of so divided a texture and so yielding to maceration, that it 

 may not need the strong action of a digestive ferment to its resolution, 

 or reduction to that state of chyme which tits it to pass into the smaller 

 intestines. Milk is the most nutritive of any fluid which can be ad- 

 ministered in this case, and, if its coagulation be prevented by the 

 addition of alkalies to counteract any accidental acid in the other 

 stomachs that might otherwise have that eflect, it will of course pass 

 forward to the curd-bag, which, from its emptiness in the dead beasts, 

 appears not to have lost its action as the higher stomachs, but to pro- 



