The Rot in Sheep. 



31 



anaemia. No author denies the existence of flukes in this dis- 

 ease, although it may be that every one does not make mention 

 of them. The accounts of their presence within the liver are 

 some of them of early date. Thus Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, in 

 his Booke of Husbandry 1532, in describing the rot of sheep, 

 says, " if thou cut the lyver, there will be lyttle quickencs like 

 flohes ; and also seeth the lyver, if it be rotten it will break in 

 pieces, and if it be sound it will hold together." 



To those who object to the statement that flukes are the direct 

 cause of the malady, may be addressed the question, How is it 

 that sheep bred and reared on sound land have flukes in their 

 livers in wet seasons, and then only ; and that under such cir- 

 cumstances they die from rot? It is admitted that they are so 

 affected. Where, then, do the entozoa now spring from? No 

 combination of ordinary causes can produce them. Their pro- 

 pagation and development are governed by fixed and unalterable 

 natural laws. When conversant with the natural history of the 

 fluke, we see fewer difficulties in accounting for the fact alluded 

 to than might be supposed ; but we will not now anticipate this 

 division of our subject. 



Entozoic diseases have been much investigated of late, and by 

 none more so in our own country than by Dr. Cobbold, the 

 talented lecturer on the subject at the Royal Veterinary College. 

 It may be affirmed that every day's experience goes to prove 

 that these diseases are neither few nor unimportant. Hitherto 

 it has been too much the custom to look upon entozoa as an 

 effect rather than a cause of disease. Are they so in that con- 

 dition of the flesh of the pig vulgarly called " measled (mizzled) 

 pork,'' or in " gid " in sheep, or in " dyspnoea " in calves and 

 lambs ? If not, why should they be so considered in rot ? 



Men who are unacquainted with the facts which have been 

 brought to light through long-continued research into the natural 

 history of the liver-fluke, and who probably possess far more 

 practical knowledge of the details of feeding and managing 

 sheep to a profit than do most scientific observers, will be sure 

 to find enough to cavil at in the revelations of science. It is 

 doubtless far easier to assert that all entozoa are the consequence 

 of impaired animal functions, than by a patient investigation to 

 become conversant with their structure, habits, and mode of 

 development, with a view to understand the way in which they 

 enter the bodies of animals and exert a deleterious effect on their 

 health. 



Our own researches a few years since brought to lighl another 

 and a fruitful cause of the death of sheep of all ages, even under 

 every variety of good feeding, management and location, from 

 the existence of a variety of worm of the strongyle class within 



