SINGULAR MORTALITY AMONG CATTLE. 533 
contents of the stomachs, but failed in detecting any tiling of an 
injurious character. 
The treatment that had been adopted consisted of bleeding, 
purging with Epsom salts, and, afterwards, half-pint doses of brandy 
in water. Three out of eight that were attacked died ; also three 
pigs, supposed to have died from eating the blood. 
This last week I have been called in to the adjoining farm to see 
the cows there, some of whom have died in a similar way, with 
this difference, that there appears to be more difficulty of breathing 
just before death, and the disease is more fatal, eight out of fourteen 
having already died. In some of them the disease cut them off in 
two hours after they were seen to be ill. I have examined most of 
them, and find them nearly all alike. I weighed the spleen of 
one. Its weight was 12| ffcs. The treatment I have adopted has 
been purging — a bleeding when the case has lingered a little, 
giving nit. antim. tart., & c. and, in two cases, I fancied with benefit, 
§j of the sp. ammon. com. every two hours. As a preventive, 
I have bled every head of cattle on the farm, giving to each Epsom 
salts ifess, sulph. sub. Jiv, nitre zingiberis 3ij, &c. Two have 
been attacked since, but one of them recovered. 
They are all milking cows, except one nineteen months old 
heifer. They have not been in good keep, for, owing to the short- 
ness of keep this summer, cattle generally do not look so well as 
usual. They have not been changed from one part of the farm to 
another. Both farms are a poor clay soil, and no running stream on 
either ; still the water has been pretty plentiful this summer, more 
so than on some farms. 
The opinion I have given is, that the disease of the spleen is the 
cause of death : that it is brought on by the long-continued hot and 
dry summer, the blood having become vitiated in quality — conges- 
tion of the spleen following, and rupture, and death. I forgot to 
mention that the blood taken from a sick animal is very slow in 
coagulating, perhaps six or $ight hours. If one is examined 
twelve hours after death, there is no coagulated blood found in 
the cavities of the heart, but of a semifluid and dark colour. 
P.S. — Should you think that the importance of these cases 
demands an immediate insertion in The VETERINARIAN, as a sub- 
scriber to that periodical, I will embody the whole for its appear- 
ance next month. 
