CHAPTEE VI. 



IN entering upon the subject of the diseases of cattle, our 

 plan will be to render it acceptable to the farmer or grazier 

 who pretends to no anatomical knowledge, but yet is glad of 

 some advice by which to be guided in the treatment of the 

 more ordinary cases of malady which demand his attention. 

 He cannot always have instant recourse to a veterinary 

 surgeon, and in slight disorders may not deem it needful, 

 though we must say we doubt the soundness of his policy. It 

 is by the veterinary surgeon only that all operations must be 

 performed ; and in cases of severe accidents his skill must be 

 called into requisition. Nothing is more to be reprobated 

 than the practice, unhappily still too general, of applying to 

 a farrier, ignorant alike of anatomy, physiology, and the 

 symptoms of disease ; or to a druggist, who is in the habit of 

 compounding drenches of various nostrums (many worse than 

 useless), when the lives of cattle are at stake. This practice is 

 the more inexcusable, when professed and well-educated veteri- 

 nary practitioners are within call of the farmer, and of such 

 few towns or rural districts are now destitute. It is not, 

 however, for the veterinary surgeon that we now write ; it is, 

 as we have said, for the farmer, and that by way of guide and 

 advice. 



The ox, like the human subject, is liable to numerous 

 maladies, arising from different causes : to fever, to inflam- 

 matory affections of the brain, lungs, liver, intestines, and 

 other organs; to paralysis, and other diseases connected 

 immediately with the nervous system; to various chronic 

 diseases, and to sudden derangement of the complicated 

 digestive apparatus from improper food. To these classes of 

 diseases others might be added, setting aside injuries from 

 external causes, which are constantly happening. 



Before entering into these more fully, a few preliminaries 



