696 
MR. CHERRY’S LECTURE 
ing, as much as possible, breeding in-and-in, and by procuring 
stocks from those which have been the least exposed to the ravages 
of the malady, the disease may be, in a great degree, removed. 
If animals had a greater degree of comfort, and were free from 
the action of cold and wet, I am satisfied that in the course of a 
few generations the disease, if it would not have ceased altogether, 
would have very much diminished in degree. I believe we may 
consider that singular deposit which is found in the lungs of the 
animal as arising from a want of power in the lungs. This may 
lie there dormant until an exciting cause has arisen, and when 
suppuration takes place an abscess is formed ; but we very often 
find the disease existing in its original form. 
Again, in the case of the skin, we find that the hair becomes 
rough, and, as it were, dead; that patches of hair come off, blisters 
arise on the surface, and that the irritated state of the skin is 
accompanied with emaciation. In such cases it is vain to apply 
external remedies, for by so doing you only aggravate the disease, 
this disease invariably depending on the febrile condition of the 
whole system. There is another form of disease which reflection 
leads me to regard as epidemic, and as arising from the same 
causes as that under consideration : I refer to the disease to which 
is given the name of small-pox. All the cases which I have been 
able to trace have arisen under circumstances similar to those 
in which you find pleuro-pneumonia rife in cattle. We do not find 
the peculiar type of pleuro-pneumonia in cattle existing very much 
amongst sheep ; they seem less prone to be affected by this parti- 
cular form of disease. Why this should be so I can hardly tell 
you, but such is certainly the fact. Sheep seem more prone to 
affections of the skin, and to a general wasting of the body, than to 
disease of the lungs. In the case of cattle, as you are aware, it is 
the lungs which are peculiarly affected ; in sheep it is the general 
organs of the body and the skin which are attacked. If you ex- 
pose a sheep to vvet and cold, you find that the skin becomes 
affected as an inevitable consequence. I have no doubt whatever 
that the maladies are kindred ones, arising from the same general 
condition of the system. 
Looking, then, at the subject in these different points of view, it 
would be useless, in the case of a disease arising from such a 
variety of causes, to prescribe any universal mode of treatment. 
The treatment which would be right in a low and damp situation, 
would not do in a high and dry one ; and hence the treatment 
should always be regulated in a great degree by the particular 
nature of the locality. With regard to treatment generally, it is of 
so complicated a matter, requires so much watching of the operation 
of the remedies, that I should not be honest if I were to advise you 
