312 



Diseases of Sheep. 



of two years twenty- nine of them were sent to the butcher, in good 

 condition. He requested that they might be examined when 

 killed, and it appeared that the liver was affected in every case 

 in the usual way. He still possesses the single sheep that was 

 not sold, and she generally produces twins every year, though 

 she has long shown the symptom of rot called choqiiered, or 

 bottling — a large glandular swelling under the neck. He has 

 usually lost sheep by the rot every year, and ascribes it to turnip- 

 feeding, or feeding on undrained land, having found it arise from 

 both causes.'^' He has often found the disorder relieved by change 

 of diet alone ; and that his sheep improve in condition shortly after 

 being tainted. As evidence of the effect of turnips in causing the 

 disorder, (probably when covered with a heavy dew or hoar-frost,) 

 he once had five sheep exhibiting symptoms of the complaint, 

 and, removing them from turnips to dry food, they all recovered. 

 In the course of seven weeks he fell ill, and, being confined to his 

 bed, his shepherd again turned these five sheep on the turnips. 

 All of them relapsed, and speedily died, and on examination 

 their livers showed all the usual symptoms of the disease. f 



It is also my conviction that the same sanatory process as is used 

 with human patients might, if practised in time, be successfully 

 adopted with sheep. I have already stated that the rot is far 

 more rapid in its attack, and apparently more capricious in its 

 exciting cause than any analogous disorder in man ; but I do not, 

 therefore, subscribe to the common opinion that it is an inflamma- 

 tion of the liver. All inflammatory action is attended with pain, 

 and if the inflammation is acute, the pain is severe ; but this une- 

 quivocal symptom appears to be wanting in the rot. Animals 

 show far more decidedly than human beings the sensitiveness of 

 pain. Pain often produces heaviness, depression of spirits, and 

 what is called anxiety or uneasiness in the expression of the hu- 

 man features ; but in the brute creation the effects are different, 

 extreme restlessness, and where the pain is acute, extreme distress 

 and violent motion or struggling being the indications. Now, in 

 sheep affected by the rot, the first symptoms that I have men- 

 tioned are always found, the last are wanting ; hence I infer that 

 inflammation, at least to any extent, does not exist in the first 

 access of the disorder, and therefore, that bleeding, the usual and 

 most efficacious remedy in inflammatory complaints, would be 



* If sheep have been pastured in low wet land, and have taken the dis- 

 ease while feeding there on turnips, they will incur the complaint, and the 

 animals will be speedily carried off ; but no sheep, in my own opinion, were 

 ever rotted by merely feeding on turnips.— J. W. Childers. 



1 1 have not either myself experienced or heard, or read before of the fact 

 of turnips rotting sheep, but I think they are not proper food for sheep when 

 they are already rotted. I think it highly probable that these sheep at San- 

 derton were rotted be/ore the farmer in question had them.—- W. Httmfrey. 



