136 Veterinary Medicine. 



and present an abundant mass of leaves when surrounding 

 vegetation is withered up. Hence, it is alleged, the animals are 

 driven to use it when nothing else is obtainable and once accus- 

 tomed to it, the desire for more becomes a veritable craze or neu- 

 rosis, and the victim searches for it and devours it to the exclu- 

 sion of other food. 



The following quotations may serve to illustrate the effects 

 alleged : 



Among the symptoms first noticed are loss of flesh, general 

 lassitude and impaired vision ; later the animal's brain seems to 

 be affected ; it becomes vicious and unmanageable and rapidly 

 loses both flesh and strength. Frequently when approaching 

 some small object it will leap into the air as if to clear a fence. 

 The patient also totters on its limbs and appears as if crazy. 

 After becoming affected it may linger many months, or a year, 

 but usually dies at last from the effects of the complaint. (Dr. 

 Vassey. Report of Dept. of Agriculture, 1884). 



"I think very few if any animals eat the loco at first from 

 choice ; but as it resists the drought until other food is scarce 

 they are first starved to it, and after eating it a short time appear 

 to prefer it to anything else. Cows are poisoned by it as well as 

 horses, but it takes more of it to affect them. It is also said to 

 poison sheep. As I have seen its actions on the horse, the first 

 symptom apparently is hallucination. When led or ridden up to 

 some little obstruction, such as a bar or rail lying in the road, he 

 stops short, and if urged, leaps as though it were four feet high. 

 Next he is seized with fits of mania in which he is quite uncon- 

 trollable and sometimes dangerous. He rears, sometimes even 

 falling backwards, runs or gives several successive leaps forward, 

 and generally falls. His eyes are rolled upward until only the 

 white can be seen, which is strongly injected and as he sees 

 nothing, is as apt to.leap against a wall or a man, as in any other 

 direction. Anything which excites him appears to induce the 

 fits, which, I think, are more apt to occur in crossing water than 

 elsewhere, and the animal sometimes falls so exhausted as to 

 drown in water not over two feet deep. He loses flesh from the 

 first, and sometimes presents the appearance of a walking skel- 

 eton. In the next and last stage he only goes from the loco to 

 water and back, his gait is feeble and uncertain, his eyes are 



