Diseases of Sheep. 



307 



bleeding. Aperient medicine — and castor-oil is the best in this 

 case — should also be given, but aperients will be mischievous 

 unless the inflammatory character, is well defined. In other 

 cases I have given the astringent drink which is described in the 

 Appendix (No. 7). It is often the case that sheep are scoured 

 by the young grasses in the spring of the year. This is not neces- 

 sarily injurious to them^ perhaps the reverse; but in such cases 

 it should be the business of the shepherd, especially in the long- 

 wooUed breeds, to shear away the wool on the tail and down the 

 breech. This should be done towards the end of April. Keep- 

 ing the sheep clean in this way tends to prevent the attack of the 

 fly. I have heard of injections being used in cases of dysentery. 

 I believe them more likely to produce mischief than good : ' the 

 disease generally^ especially in its aggravated form^ occasions a 

 secretion of mucus, to an unnatural extent^, in a part of the bowels 

 which no injection would reach. I have much more faith in the 

 astringent drink that I have recommended ; and should it not 

 prove efficient, the laudanum may be cautiously increased, but 

 great caution must be observed in the case of lambs. 



The Rot is of all the diseases of sheep the most fatab and per- 

 haps^ as respects its proximate cause, the least understood. The 

 disease itself has been well ascertained to be an affection of the 

 liver. Its early symptoms resemble those of a diseased liver in 

 man : the skin^ on separating the wool, will be found to have a 

 yellow tinge ; the membrane lining the interior of the ej elidsj 

 and the gland in the corner of the eye^, called the caruncula lach- 

 rymaliti, will have the same hue; and even the flesh, if the sheep 

 is killed in this stage of the disorder, will lose its proper colour, 

 and be pale. Extreme emaciation, attended with dysentery, loss 

 of appetite, and enlargement of the abdomen will be the next 

 symptoms, and generally attended by some degree of cough; 

 cracking of the loins on pressure is distinctly perceived ; dropsy 

 follows, and, in the course of seven or eight weeks, or even 

 sooner, death ensues. 



Eager and rapid feeding, and occasionally sudden death among 

 the flock, have also been mentioned by a learned writer (Dr. Har- 

 rison) among circumstances that should rouse the shepherd's sus- 

 picion. 



On examination after death the appearance of the lungs is very 

 uncertain, but the liver is invariably found to be the principal 

 seat of the disorder, though all the abdominal viscera are more 



* Injections, composed of warm gruel, with the addition of twenty, 

 thirty, or forty drops of laudanum, would do good, by allaying the pain and 

 great excitement consequent upon this disease, although probably they 

 might not reach the actual seat of it. — T. Spurgin. [Communicated by 

 Lord Braybrooke.] 



