352 SMALL-POX. 



to exercise a constant and watchful care on this subject — not 

 only where sheep-pox is raging and is the subject of public 

 attention in the foreign countries where they purchase sheep, 

 but at all times, if it is known that the malady has ever visited 

 those countries. The man who even carelessly brought this 

 scourge to our shores, would deserve and receive the reproba- 

 tion of a Continent. 



I am not aware that any important discoveries have been 

 made in the actual treatment of the disease in England ; and 

 owing to my faUure to obtain certain expected English 

 publications on the subject, before the completion of this 

 volume, I cannot give any particular history of the disease in 

 that country obtained from authoritative sources. The 

 general tenor of my information on the subject is, that the 

 Variola Ovina, in its natural form, is as destructive and 

 contagious there as on the Continent ; that the means relied 

 on to counteract it are Tprivcij^aWj preventive / that the main 

 modes of preventing it are by inoculation and vaccination. 

 It seems that there are those who prefer the latter mode. I 

 saw it stated in an article in the American Agriculturist, that 

 an association of sheep breeders in Wiltshire, England, on 

 trial, much preferred vaccination. * 



The disease, after a lull of a few years, has recently, it 

 would seem, re-appeared in England. I cut the foUowmg 

 paragraphs on the subject from " Moore's E.ural New- 

 Yorker:" 



" From Bell's Messenger we learn that the medicines 

 employed in Mr. Parry's flock, where the disease was first 

 apparent, are very simple, consisting chiefly of nitrate of 

 potassa, mingled with the water which is placed in the 

 troughs, until a subsidence of the fever takes place, after 

 which sulphate of iron has been substituted. Where diarrhea 

 has come on — as it not unfrequently does in the latter stage 

 of the malady, more particularly if the pox becomes conflu- 

 ent — opium is recommended as a valuable agent to arrest the 

 attack, which, if not quickly stopped, very soon carries ofi'the 

 sheep. 



" Speaking of inoculation, the Messenger remarks : — 



* It was stated in this article that the inoculated shee^ " died oflF rapidly, and 

 thus the proposed prevention only spread the infection." If this is a correct statement 

 of tlie facts, it only shows, I imagine, that the flocks of Wiltshire were Inoculated 

 with improper virus, or that they were affected by exceptional and inauspicions cir- 

 cumstances. The alleged result is too much opposed to the well settled facts which 

 attend inoculation, developed under upwards of a century and a half of observo. 

 tion— and to the combined experience of the Continental veterinarianB— to be enti- 

 tled to credit. 



