The Rot in Sheep, 



65 



be proportionably great. Speaking in general terms, however, 

 we have little fear of a wet month of May, or even beginning 

 of June ; but as Midsummer approaches and the year goes on, 

 so does the danger increase. 



Thousands of sheep took the rot in the months of June and 

 July, both in 1860 and 1879, as well as subsequently thereto, 

 and onwards to the autumn. The employment as well as the 

 value of preventive remedies rests on our being enabled to fix the 

 time of the commencement of the disease. It is the circumstance of 

 sheep falling away in flesh, and exhibiting the general symptoms 

 of rot in the autumn, which has too often led to incorrect conclu- 

 sions as to the time of the origin of the malady. Effects have 

 been mistaken for causes. Men have not generally known that 

 from three to four months are frequently needed for flukes in the 

 liver to produce their debilitating effects on the organism of 

 the sheep. Elsewhere we have explained the reasons why an 

 elevated temperature, combined with excess of rainfall, is 

 dangerous, and need not repeat the argument. We may, how- 

 ever, add that with the end of October the danger, as a rule, 

 has passed away, the approach of cold weather, and especially 

 the occurrence of frosts, speedily removing the cause of further 

 mischief. The natural history of the liver-fluke also satisfac- 

 torily explains this. If it be true, as practical men believe, that 

 the autumn is the most dangerous period of the year to sheep, it 

 is equally true that they agree in asserting that frost at once puts 

 a stop to the reception of the rot. Fairburn, in combating Hogg's 

 opinion of the cause of the disease, remarks, " I have lost from 

 time to time a great number of hoggs by poverty, and I could cer- 

 tainly trace their death to ' want of meat and shelter ;' but there 

 were none of those diagnostic symptoms apparent which indi- 

 cate the complaint called rot. Cold and frosts are always 

 severe on hunger-stricken hoggs , but / have uniformly found 

 that frost prevented the rot, and that if the disease had not been 

 taken previous to the arrival of frost, it never followed that kind 

 of weather" 



Symptoms of Rot. 



As every disease is accompanied with a train of phenomena 

 usually designated symptoms, it becomes necessary that these 

 should be carefully investigated, so that the nature of each sepa- 

 rate affection may be fully understood. The importance of this 

 procedure is further shown by the circumstance that many 

 symptoms are common to several diseases ; while others, on the 

 contrary, belong only to particular affections, and hence afford 

 the pathologist a ready means of forming a correct diagnosis. 



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