THE OX AND THE DAIKY. 217 



cow feverish, uneasy, without appetite, perhaps sick, and finds 

 the milk changed from what it ought to be to a disgusting 

 secretion, which, if an honest man, he will not mix with that of 

 healthy cows, let him send for the veterinary surgeon (not the 

 cow-leech), and trust the case into his hands. And here we 

 may state that one object we have in view is to make the farmer 

 and cattle-keeper cautious, and distrustful both of his own 

 opinion and that of the village oracle, half blacksmith half 

 doctor, who is quite as fit to attend the good man on his 

 sick-bed, as he is one of the animals in the yard or cow-house. 

 Let us now attend to another disease intimately connected 

 with inflammation of the mucous membrane of the alimentary 

 canal : we allude to dysentery, which we cannot well notice 

 without taking diarrhoaa also into consideration. 



DYSENTEEY AND DIAKKHCEA. 



These two diseases are both characterized by excessive 

 alvine evacuations; and the latter disease, viz. diarrhoea, 

 which is simple purging, may run on into the former. 

 Dysentery we conceive to be always connected with conges- 

 tion or inflammation of the mucous lining of the intestines, 

 involving disturbance of the functions of the liver and the 

 true digesting stomach. In true dysentery we have fever, 

 tenderness of the loins and abdomen, frequent and perhaps 

 bloody purging, accompanied by tenesmus and spasms, as in 

 colic. Dysentery is often the concomitant of other disorders ; 

 but here we speak of dysentery as an acute disease per se, 

 occasionally merging into a chronic form, and too often 

 resulting in death. 



True dysentery begins with shivering, succeeded by decided 

 febrile symptoms and pain in the bowels, with mucous alvine 

 evacuations, loss of appetite, and nausea; tenesmus and 

 muco-sanguinolent purging succeed, not without pain ; the 

 pulse is hard, small, and frequent ; the tongue dry ; the 

 urine scanty ; prostration of the strength rapidly comes on, 

 and the pulse becomes feeble ; the tongue is covered with a 

 brown fur ; offensive and dark- coloured alvine evacuations 

 now occur; the body is emaciated, the limbs totter, they 

 become spasmodically contracted, torpor and death ensue. 

 Sometimes, after a degree of apparent convalescence, the 

 disease returns and assumes a chronic form ; the food, mixed 

 with mucus and blood, passes through the bowels only half 

 digested; the pulse is feeble; there is great emaciation of 



