On Lameness in Sheep and Lambs. 
7 
mended in the milder cases. If in a fortnight proud flesh grows 
too rapidly, and there is no appearance of healthy liora forming 
itself, the parts may be touched with lunar caustic, or with what is 
still better, the red-hot iron. Give the sheep occasionally a dose of 
salts and saltpetre, and keep down proud flesh with the caustic 
or hot iron, and in a few weeks a cure will be effected. I will 
again caution shepherds and others to apply caustics only where 
proud flesh has sprung up, and not to allow their butter of anti- 
mony, or any other of their favourite hot stuffs, to run over the 
whole denuded foot, for this always increases inflammation, and 
consequently delays the cure. 
Causes. — This disease, when once propagated, will spread 
rapidly bv contagion, that is, by contact with its morbid secre- 
tions. Infected sheep will communicate it to those that are 
sound. Sound sheep may become affected even by following 
diseased ones on a road, or by being placed in a field where an 
infected flock a few days previously had been. 
Treatment. — When epizootic foot-rot breaks out upon a farm, 
it is not without some difficulty freed from it ; however, its 
removal is accomplished more easily than some may be disposed 
to imagine. As soon then as the disease makes its appearance 
the whole flock should be moved to a part of the farm not used 
for feeding sheep, and those that are healthy should be separated 
from the diseased ones ; these should be taken to a straw-yard 
or dry fold, and treated as I advised in a former part of my 
Essay. When any fresh cases occur amongst the healthy sheep, 
they should be immediately removed to those already infected ; 
and if a fortnight or three weeks elapse without any fresh cases 
taking place, the healthy sheep may return to the pasture or fold 
they before occupied, the affected ones not being allowed to mix 
with them until all trace of disease has disappeared. 
Ellis, who wrote in 1749, speaks of the disease being natu- 
ralized in Great Britain, and especially in counties round the 
metropolis. He mentions that, ewes being seized with foot-rot, 
it was communicated to those that were sound, and to the lambs 
which they suckled ; and that most of the meadows were so 
infected with this sheep-malady that but few of the suckling 
ewes were ever clear from it. (Ellis's ' Shepherd's Guide,' p. 
280.) 
It is said, in the present day, there are pastures that will pro- 
duce this disease, and that sheep cannot be placed upon them 
and remain free from it. Under-drain such pastures, and feed 
them with animals of a different class for a few months. Sell 
off the old flock, and in two months purchase a sound one ; it 
will then be found that epizootic foot-rot will soon cease to exist. 
Gasparin, a celebrated French veterinarian, in speaking of the 
