ENZOOTIC DYSENTERY. 291 



Tliis may be repeated twice or thrice daily, being given in 

 gruel. 



Chalk, alone or combined with opium, has been much used, 

 and with advantage when the acute symptoms are subdued. 

 Other astringents, such as lime and catechu, have been em- 

 ployed; but, as a general rule, great care should be taken 

 not to load the intestine with many medicines which are apt 

 to irritate. Judicious diet is of great service in assisting an 

 animal towards convalescence. 



ENZOOTIC DYSENTERY. WOOD EVIL. MOOE ILL. 

 MEL JEN A. THE *DAKN' OF ABEEDEENSHIEE. 



From the peculiar discoloration of the urine, this disease 

 has been regarded by some as chiefly implicating the kidneys, 

 .but it will be found in all well-marked instances that the 

 bowels are primarily and principally affected. It is a dis- 

 order very widely diffused over Europe, and occurring on 

 pastures, moors, or commons adjacent to woodland. The 

 food these pastures afford may be rich or poor, but it always 

 contains astringent plants in abundance, and at the period 

 when the disease is most rife, viz., in the spring or early in 

 the summer season, young shoots of oak or allied plants are 

 greedily devoured, and produce the so-called wood evil It 

 is not, as I have elsewhere shown, due to any special poison- 

 ous plant, such as Lolium temulentum, or Anemone nemorosa, 

 but to the astringent principles of many of the trees, 

 &c., found in our woods. I have known cases to occur 

 amongst young cattle in the spring, who greedily devoured 

 the leaves of some oak trees that were felled adjoining a 

 pasture on which the malady had never been seen. 



Symptoms. The animals become hidebound, costive, can- 

 not urinate freely, secretion of milk stopped, and rumination 



