560 Veterinwry Medicine. 



rule, empty of food, though containing a sanguineous liquid. 

 The contents of the large intestines are usually dry and hard. 

 Some serous exudate is usually present in the peritoneum, pleura 

 and pericardium. The spleen may be normal or slightly en- 

 larged. The liver is pale, soft and friable. The kidneys may be 

 congested and swollen and usually show brownish areas of necro- 

 sis in which the bacillus is readily found. The blood is dark, 

 and though it may be coagulated, the clot is usually soft and 

 diffluent. 



Prevention. Much may be done in the way of drainage and 

 above all cultivation and liming of the braxy pastures, and again 

 laying them down in grass. Cowan found that braxy diminished 

 largely in ratio with the improvement and cultivation of the soil. A 

 rotation of crops and the free seration of the soil tends to destroy 

 an anaerobic microbe or to render it nonvirulent. Winter feeding 

 is another well attested source of protection. Hay with turnips, 

 oats, linseed cake or oil cake seems to encrease the tone and vigor, 

 and to counteract the fermentions in the digestive organs which 

 lay the system open to attack. Wholesome and nutritious food 

 then must be a main stay whenever the health threatens to be 

 undermined by insufficient or unwholesome pasture, by dried or 

 withered grass, ferns or heather, by the watery grass of recent 

 and rapid growth, by frosted and partially decayed herbage, or 

 by pasture exhausted by overstocking or drought. 



Fields and hills known to be infecting must bs abandoned 

 especially in late fall and winter and in the case of the younger 

 and more susceptible sheep. Understocking is always better than 

 overstocking as the flock is kept better nourished, stronger and 

 with a greater measure of tolerance and resistance. Upon land 

 covered with old, fibrous, astringent heather, burning is often of 

 great value. The new growth of young heather is much more 

 digesti'ble and nutritious, and' destitute of injurious astringency, 

 and maintains a stronger and healthier flock. 



Finally the question of immunization arises. Nielsen attempted 

 this by drying and heating to sterilization the diseased kidney 

 and injected small quantities of this suspended in water. Sheep 

 treated in this way in Norway and Iceland have had a circum- 

 scribed inflammatory swelling and afterward appeared to resist 

 casual infection when placed on the braxy fields. Jensen carried 



