514 
PROFESSOR SIMON DS’ LECTURE. 
ence lo the duration of life in its latent form in the egg. How 
long the eggs of birds would remain without undergoing change, 
if not placed under circumstances favourable to the development 
of life in a more active form, was undecided. It was the same 
with the ova of these parasites ; so long as they remained on the 
pasture they underwent no change: but place them in the body of 
the animal, and subject them to the influence of heat, &c., then 
those changes would commence which ended in the production of 
perfect flukes. Take another illustration of the long duration of 
latent life : — Wheat had been locked up for hundreds of years — nay, 
for thousands — in Egyptian mummies, without undergoing any 
change, and yet, when planted, had been found prolific. [The lec- 
turer then referred to some statements made by the late Mr. Youatt 
some years since, in a work on the Anatomy and Diseases of Sheep, 
published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 
on the structure of the fluke, and controverted some of his state- 
ments.] 
In conclusion, he made some observations on the mode of treat- 
ment. He was not there to say that rot was in all cases a curable 
affection ; but at the same time he was fully aware that many ani- 
mals that are now considered incurable, might be restored if suf- 
ficient attention was given to them. He mentioned one fact in 
illustration. About two years ago he purchased seven or eight 
sheep, all of them giving indisputable proof of rot in its advanced 
stage. He intended them for experiment and dissection ; but as 
he did not require all of them, and during the winter season, in 
which only he could dissect, he kept some until the summer. They 
were supplied with food of nutritious quality, free from moisture ; 
they were also protected from all storms and changes of weather, 
being placed in a shed ; the result was, that without the application 
of any medicine, two of those rotten sheep quite recovered ; and 
when he killed them, although he found that the liver had under- 
gone some change, still the animals would have lived on for years. 
Rot, in its advanced stage, was a disease which might be con- 
sidered analogous to dropsy — a serous fluid accumulates in various 
parts of the body, chiefly beneath the cellular tissue — consequently 
some called it the water rot, others the fluke rot ; but these were 
merely indications of the same disease in different stages. If 
flukes were present, it was evident that, in order to strike at the 
root of the malady, they must get rid of these entozoa, and that 
could only be effected by bringing about a healthy condition of the 
system. Nothing that could be done by the application of medi- 
cine would act on them to effect their vitality. It was only by 
strengthening the animal powers that they were enabled to give 
sufficient tone to the system to throw off the flukes ; for this pur- 
