FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE. 
233 
infectious character of the disease and its rapid extension to 
nearly all the animals on a farm — cattle, sheep, pigs, and 
poultry — must also be placed among its objectionable pecu- 
liarities, and the list is completed by the addition of certain 
sequelae, which often render valuable animals entirely useless : 
for example, loss of hoofs, sloughing of ligaments, mortifica- 
tion or induration of the udder, or a portion of it, inflamma- 
tion of the tongue (glositis), and sometimes induration of 
that organ. In fact, taking a comprehensive view of all the 
circumstances, it may be asserted with truth that no disease 
of the lower animals is more deserving of serious attention 
than is the mouth and foot complaint. 
Treatment of Mouth and Foot Disease. 
Modern therapeutics have one essential principle of action 
which elevates the science far above its original condition, — 
the principle of avoiding unnecessary interference. Older 
physicians seem to have been impressed with a belief that it 
was incumbent on them to oppose every indication of disease 
by inducing a contrary condition. Modern medicine has 
made the discovery that what appears to be the result of 
disease is often the indication of a natural cure, and therefore 
to be encouraged rather than interrupted. Some diseases, 
and especially those of the class to which mouth and foot 
disease belongs, have a natural method of progress towards 
recovery which can scarcely be with safety accelerated, but 
which may be easily retarded by the injudicious employment 
of remedies. So long as the disease advances regularly 
through its several stages, chemical agents are more likely to 
be injurious than beneficial; and beyond supporting the 
system by the administration of aliment adapted to the 
enfeebled nutritive functions, and keeping the diseased 
animals under the most perfect sanitary conditions, the 
medical attendant is powerless for good, but terribly potent 
for evil. 
Unhappily for the lower animals, the modern idea of 
medicine has not reached the minds of those to whose hands 
farmers still elect to entrust the treatment of their stock, and 
who are in the habit of perpetrating surgical and medical 
barbarisms which ought to be impossible among an intelligent 
people. It is not without stern reason the writer asserts his 
conviction, that taking into consideration the ignorance 
which prevails among those who have most to do with the 
diseases of animals, an edict w 7 hich should prevent henceforth 
and for ever the administration of a grain of any non* 
