178 
SANGUINEOUS APOPLEXY. 
Wherever there is a superabundance of heating food there the 
disease appears. Give vetches or any other vegetable, and you 
will inevitably produce sanguineous congestion. This indisputable 
fact is well known to all scientific agriculturists, and I have fre- 
quently verified it not only in the sheep, but also in oxen, pigs, 
and horses, and even in poultry. Far be it from me, however, to 
deny that other causes may unite themselves with this excess of 
food. Thus want of exercise, by increasing the quantity of blood, 
which in a quiet state undergoes no loss, will tend to induce the 
disease in oxen as well as sheep. Too great dryness of the air, 
excessive heat, dust, the burning rays of the sun to which our 
flocks are exposed while pasturing, are all causes that, by taking 
from the blood its serosity by means of cutaneous and pulmonary 
transpiration, induce it to thicken and stagnate in the organs. 
Rapid journeys, a too plentiful meal, the influence of air charged 
with electricity, sudden changes of temperature, violent rains, & c., 
all may, I know, develop this disease. But I repeat, that san- 
guineous congestion is never developed without a stimulus, and 
this stimulus is superabundance of food. What proves beyond a 
doubt that this is the actual cause of the disease is, that in other 
parts, on the same farm, the disease will attack the youngest and 
most vigorous sheep, and spare the others that do not thrive 
so well. 
The nature of .the soil, its greater or less degree of drought, the 
hygrometrical state of the atmosphere, especially during the growth 
of vegetation, are circumstances which appear to act very power- 
fully in the development of this disease ; but these operate only in an 
indirect manner, by giving to the vegetation more or less nutritive 
qualities. Thus in 1840 and 1842, when the plants having vege- 
tated in a warm dry atmosphere contained a great proportion of 
nutritive matter in a small compass, we saw this disease commit- 
ting fearful ravages throughout the whole year, and especially 
during the winter. In 1843, on the contrary, the summer having 
been more rainy, the plants were luxurious but not very nutritious : 
the congestion then committed very few ravages, although the ani- 
mals were, to all appearance, better fed than on the preceding year. 
From what has already been said, I should think that no dis- 
cerning mind would entertain the supposition that a young and 
vigorous sheep, with quick and animated eyes, that on being 
bled yielded a thick plastic blood, would in a few hours become 
affected with a typhoid or putrid fever, and that without known 
causes or direct infection. “In order,” most judiciously observes 
M. FI. Bouley, “ that such an alteration of the nutritive fluid may 
be developed, it is necessary that the economy shall have been for 
some time subjected to injurious influences, which acting upon the 
whole system by modifying, altering, and vitiating the organic 
