CATTLE PATHOLOGY. 
415 
at certain seasons of the year than at others, and where the 
action not only predisposes the system to inflammation, but 
gives to it a more obstinate character. Again, a plethoric 
constitution, or a system overloaded with blood, disposes it to 
inflammatory affections, as pleuro-pneumonia, apoplexy, &c. 
In this case the diet should be cooling, temperate in amount, 
and regular as to meals, accompanied with gentle exercise, 
the liberal use of the flesh-brush to keep the insensible per- 
spiration up, and an active aperient occasionally, especially 
in early spring and autumn. The opposite temperament of 
this, — viz., the phlegmatic or verminous — has an excess of 
serum in the blood and cellular membrane, and predisposes 
the system to worms and morbid secretions ; consequently, 
as a prevention, a warm strengthening diet is recommended. 
Then we have gouty, rheumatic, and nervous temperaments, 
requiring their respective modes of dieting to keep down 
their action to the lowest degree of tensity. In all these 
cases, experience has taught man the truth of the adage, and 
therefore he acts accordingly. The brute creation in a wild 
state, too, is often guided by instinct to pursue a similar 
course, by selecting various medical herbs for food, eating 
earth, going great distances to drink sea-water as a vermifuge, 
and the like; but with domesticated animals, under our arti- 
ficial systems, no such privileges are enjoyed, while the poor 
brutes are, on the contrary, induced by a thousand pampering 
means to increase the action of constitutional disease. And 
in addition to constitutional maladies of the above nature, 
the stomach of man is frequently either in an alkaline or 
acidulous state, requiring antacids and antalkalies to correct 
them ; and such are always better given in food containing 
these in their natural state — as lemon-juice or sour milk — 
than in the shape of crystallized acids or alkalies, as citric 
acid and lactic acid, from the shops. Such is the case of 
man ; and analogous to it will be found that of our domesti- 
cated animals. 
To prevent pleuro-pneumonia, therefore, farmers should 
watch narrowly the prognostics of plethoric animals, and pay 
attention, in time, to the kind of regimen or food, and 
grooming, they require, especially when they are constitu- 
tionally of scrofulous habits. 
Again, to prevent worms in the windpipe, a disease very 
prevalent at present, phlegmatic animals should be narrowly 
watched, and a warm, stimulating, and strengthening diet 
given in time, such as a liberal allowance of oil-cake or 
linseed-meal and India-corn, with a suitable seasoning of salt 
and bitter herbs as tonics — the latter more especially for 
