WOOD-EVIL, MOOR-ILL, PANTAS. 



to rheiimatisrn, or being essentially rheumatic ; others consider it to 

 be a disease of debility, looking to the consequence of inflammation, 

 and not to the inflammation itself. If any distinction were drawn 

 between wood-evil and enteritis in cattle, it would be, that although 

 in wood-evil there seems to be more affection of the head, and the 

 animal appears now and then as if it were rabid, there is not so much 

 intestinal inflammation, and the disease dose not so speedily run its 

 course. Wood-evil may last from twelve to twenty days. 



The prognosis, or expectation of the termination of the disease, is 

 always unfavorable when after a certain time much fever comes on, 

 or the costiveness will not give way, or the urine is thick or bloody, 

 or the disease attains its full intensity in the space of a few days. 

 Then, instead of terminating in resolution, the inflammation runs on 

 to gangrene ; all the acute symptoms suddenly disappear, and death 

 IS not far distant. On the other hand, the result will be favorable 

 when the disease does not reach that degree of intensity of which 

 it is capable — when, after a few days, the symptoms gradually dis- 

 appear, and the animal regains his former habits, and the excrement 

 resumes its natural form and consistence. 



The history thai has been given of this disease will leave little 

 doubt respecting the course of treatment that should be pursued. A 

 malady of so intensely an inflammatory character should be met by 

 prompt and decisive measures : and to them it will, in its early 

 stage, generally yield. Nothing is so easy as to give relief to a 

 sapped or fardel-bound beast, before he begins to heave at the flanks 

 or ceases to ruminate ; but quickness of breathing, and heat of the 

 mouth, and evident fever, being once established, the animal will 

 probably be lost. 



The patient should be bled. If it be simple costiveness without 

 fever, the abstraction of six or eight quarts of blood may suffice ; 

 but if the symptoms of inflammation cannot be misunderstood, the 

 measure of the bleeding will be the quantity that the animal will 

 lose before he staggers or falls. Purgatives should follow — the first 

 dose being of the full strength, and assisted by quickly repeated 

 ones, until quick purging is produced. Hot water, or blisters, should 

 be applied to the belly, and the food of the beast should be re- 

 stricted to gruel and mashes. This will, in most cases, include the 

 whole of the treatment. 



If other spmptoms should arise, or other parts appear to be in- 

 volved, the practitioner will change his mode of proceeding accord- 

 ingly ; but he will be cautious how he gives aromatics or tonics, 

 until he is convinced that the state of fever has passed over, and 

 circumstances indicate the approach of debility and of typhus fever. 



Homoeopathic treatment. — Ipecacuanha and veratrmn, alternately, 

 every quarter of an hour, are the means by which this disease has 

 been cured, which, in general, proceeds with great rapidity. Aeon- 

 itum and arscniciim might be most properly administered. 



