DISEASES OF THE URINAEY ORGANS. 117 



excess caused by the enormous consumption of a liquid feed, which 

 nourishes and fattens in spite of the diuresis; the condition is un- 

 wholesome, and cattle that have passed four or five months in a 

 swill stable have fatty livers and Iddneys, and never again do well on 

 ordinary feed. Diuresis may further occur from increase of blood 

 pressure in the kidneys (diseases of the heart or lungs which hinder 

 the onward passage of the blood, the eating of digitalis, English 

 broom, the contraction of the blood vessels on the surface of the body 

 in cold weather, etc.) ; also from acrid or diuretic plants taken with 

 the feed (dandelion, burdock, colchicum, digitalis, savin, resinous 

 shoots, etc.) ; from excess of sugar in the feed (beets, turnips, ripe 

 sorghum) ; also from the use of frozen feed (frosted turnip tops and 

 other vegetables), and from the growths of certain molds in fodder 

 (musty hay, mow-burnt hay, moldy oats, moldy bread, etc.) . Finally, 

 alkaline waters and alkaline incrustations on the soil may be active 

 causes. In some of these cases the result is beneficial rather than in- 

 jurious, as when cattle affected with gravel in the kidneys are en- 

 tirely freed from this condition by a run at grass, or by an exclusive 

 diet of roots or swill. In other cases, however, the health and condi- 

 tion suffer, and even inflammation of the kidneys may occur. 



Treatment. — The treatment is mainly in the change of diet to a 

 more solid aliment destitute of the special, offensive ingredient. 

 Boiled flaxseed is often the best diet or addition to the wholesome 

 dry food, and, by waj^ of medicine, doses of 2 drams each of sulphate 

 of iron and iodid of potassium may be given twice daily. In obsti- 

 nate cases 2 drams ergot of rye or of catechu may be added. 



BLOODY URINE (RED WATER, MOOR ILL, WOOD ILL, HEMATURIA, 



HEMAGLOBINURIA). 



This is a common affection among cattle in certain localities, above 

 all on damp, undrained lands and under a backward agriculture. It 

 is simply bloody urine or hematuria when the blood is found in clots, 

 or when under the microscope the blood globules can be detected as 

 distinctly rounded, flattened disks. It is smoky urine — hemaglobinu- 

 ria — when neither such distinct clots nor blood disks can be found, but 

 merely a general browning, reddening, or blackening of the urine by 

 the presence of dissolved, blood-coloring matter. The bloody urine is 

 the more direct result of structural disease of the kidneys or urinary 

 passages (inflammation, stone, gravel, tumors, hydatids, kidney 

 worms, sprains of the loins), while the stained urine (hemaglobinu- 

 ria) is usually the result of some general or more distinct disorder in 

 which the globules are destroyed in the circulating blood and the 

 coloring matter dissolved in and diffused through the whole mass of 

 the blood and of the urine secreted from it. As in the two forms, 

 blood and the elements of blood escape into the urine, albumin is 



