58 



The Rot in Sheep. 



have occasionally been found in the horse, but more frequently 

 in the ass. Daubenton records this fact, and the late Professor 

 Sewell, of the Royal Veterinary College, also found some in the 

 ass, and several years since the specimens were deposited in 

 the College Museum. Since that time these specimens have 

 been supplemented by several others. In addition to these 

 examples, it may be mentioned that a few years ago our opinion 

 was asked by Mr. Pritchard, M.R.C.V.S., Wolverhampton, 

 respecting a case communicated to him of flukes in the liver of 

 a horse. Elsewhere we have spoken of the susceptibility of the 

 pig and also of the hare and rabbit to flukes ; so that the 

 instances of simple-stomached animals being affected are not so 

 unfrequent as might have been supposed from the direct action 

 of the gastric juice on the penultimate form of the liver-fluke. 



In herbivora of such large size as the horse and ox, the ill 

 effects of the entozoa are not so marked as in the sheep and 

 smaller animals. Besides which, their number is often limited 

 to a very few. Dr. Budd has rightly observed in his work 4 On 

 Diseases of the Liver J 1857, that "the supposition that the dis- 

 tomata cause, in some way or other, a serous discharge from 

 the gall-ducts they inhabit, accounts for their producing less 

 effect on larger cattle than on sheep, hares, and rabbits. A loss 

 of albumen that would exhaust these small animals would have 

 little effect on an ox." 



Occasionally, however, bovine animals do succumb to the 

 exhaustive drain on their system, and the structural changes 

 which result from the long existence of flukes in the gall-ducts 

 of the liver. This is more especially the case with yearlings 

 which are badly fed and cared for, instances of which were sup- 

 plied to us by the late Mr. Lepper, M.R.C.V.S., of Aylesbury, 

 That such cases occur more frequently than is supposed is 

 shown by the following extracts from a letter dated March 20th, 

 1868, which we received from Mr. H. Thompson, M.R.C.V.S., 

 Aspatria, Cumberland. Mr. Thompson writes : " For the last 

 six years my attention has been called to a large number of 

 unyielding cases of diarrhoea in young stirks. Failing in my 

 treatment of most of these cases, I made searching post-mortem 

 examinations, and discovered flukes in the liver in large num- 

 bers. Upon inquiry I found that the animals, as calves, had 

 been kept during the early part of the summer in the sheds, 

 and turned out in August to September on the after-grass and 

 old lays, i to blow them up,' as the phrase is. They generally 

 went well through the following winter and up to the latter 

 part of the summer, when the disease set in, and ultimately 

 carried them off. 



" For the last two years I have prevented the disease on the 



