On the Sheep-Pox. 



493 



take the infection by the first inoculation, it is requisite to 

 examine the whole flock after the lapse of six or seven days from 

 the date of the first operation, and to inoculate a second time 

 wherever the first has proved abortive. 



Treatment of the Sheep after Inoculation. — 1st. Care must be 

 taken to provide them with airy and roomy stabling:, so as to 

 prevent them as much as possible crowding: together, which is 

 very apt to induce a malignant state of the disease, even when at 

 first disposed to assume a mild form. 



2nd. It is absolutely necessary to keep them carefully guarded 

 against cold, and especially thorough draughts. 



3rd. Although, during warm and dry weather, both of the above- 

 mentioned evils are avoidable, by placing the sheep during the 

 daytime in a dry, sheltered, and not too distant paddock ; still it 

 must be remembered, that exposure to rain, dew, or fog would 

 prove highly dangerous to them. They must therefore be housed 

 at night, and when housed fed, in addition to good hay, with 

 coarse meal, some of which ought also to be mixed with the water 

 they get to drink. 



If all the foregoing measures have been adopted, and the 

 disease appear in a mild form, internal medicine may be entirely 

 dispensed with. Should, however, symptoms occur which render 

 it desirable, the following powder may be advantageously ad- 

 ministered : — 



Take equal parts of saltpetre and sulphur, reckoning one 

 drachm of the mixture to a dose, to which must be added, for the 

 first three days, two or three grains of rock-salt in powder; these 

 ingredients to be intim.ately incorporated with raw oatmeal, and 

 left beside the sheep for them to lick it ; after three days cam- 

 phor may be substituted for rock-salt. 



From the time that pus begins to form in the pustules, as well 

 as during their scabbing and drying off, a slight acidulation, by 

 means of vitriolic acid, of the water given to the sheep to drink, 

 has been found useful. This summary, simple and easily practi- 

 cable as it is, contains the substance of all the theories on the 

 subject of sheep-pox on which experience has stamped the seal of 

 approval. Precautionary measures on this side of the North Sea, 

 for ascertaining the soundness of sheep about to be shipped could 

 scarcely be enforced, since incipient taint may exist, and yet no 

 symptom appear till drawn forth by the warmth of the hold. 

 The sanitory cordon must therefore be drawn in England, if 

 anywhere ; and it might perhaps be advisable to appoint com- 

 petent persons at all sea-ports to which sheep are imported, to 

 examine the animals on landing, and empowered, when suspicious 

 symptoms appear in any one of a flock, to subject the whole to a 

 w eck's quarantine, during w'hich the existence or non-existence of 



