IMPACTION IN SHEEP. 185 



third stomach become hard and dry.* Certain kinds of food 

 may induce the disorder, and Mr John Hawes of Taunton 

 relates an interesting case in the Veterinarian for 1840, in 

 which sheep were destroyed by eating new wheat : 



" In the month of September in the last year, a flock of 

 sheep, more than 200 in number, strayed into a field where 

 was a quantity of wheat that had not been carried in conse- 

 quence of the unfavourable state of the weather. They fed 

 rather bountifully on it before they were discovered by the 

 shepherd, when they were immediately removed to the pas- 

 ture on which they had previously been grazing, and no 

 further notice was taken of them until the following day, 

 when four of them were found dead, and several others were 

 evidently ill. To all that evinced any symptoms of dis- 

 ease, Epsom salts and castor oil were immediately given; 

 but on the following morning, finding that twenty- eight had 

 already died, and nearly as many more were almost dead, 

 the owner sent for me, as is too frequently the case, when it 

 was too late to be of much service. 



" The first thing that I did was to examine some of those 

 that had died, and I found the rumen in every instance filled 

 with wheat, barley, and straw; the abomasum highly in- 

 flamed, as well as the bowels ; the spleen had the appearance 

 of a mass of coagulated blood, its structure being entirely 



* A dry condition of the contents of the omasum is, as I have already 

 shown, normal, but we find it erroneously referred to as a characteristic 

 morbid appearance in many diseases when there is really but slight 

 difference from a healthy state. Some of the most fatal diseases have 

 been regarded as simply impaction of the third stomach, such as the 

 pestilential typhoid disease which originates in the steppes, and for 

 which the Germans have an old name, Loserdiirre, signifying the hard 

 condition of the third stomach. Practitioners should carefully examine 

 the stomachs of any animals slaughtered in health before drawing any 

 conclusions as to disease. 



