72 
ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
removed there will not be the slightest remission of any of the 
symptoms. It is a remark confirmed by every day’s obser- 
vation, that the return of the natural action of the bowels is the 
first symptom, and the almost certain pledge, of returning health. 
Still I should be loth to administer any acrid purgative. A pound 
of Epsom salts, with half an ounce of ginger, should be admi- 
nistered after the bleeding, and with the important precaution of 
pouring it, by means of a long-necked bottle, or Read’s patent 
syringe, slowly down the throat, in order that it may not acquire 
sufficient momentum to break through the floor of the cesopha- 
gean canal, and fall into the rumen and be lost. Smaller doses, 
consisting of half a pound of Epsom salts and four ounces of 
sulphur, should after this be administered once in every six 
hours, until the bowels are opened ; and the purgative effect 
should be for a while kept up by a repetition of the sulphur. 
Aromatics with the Purgative . — I have recommended a large 
dose of the aromatic with the purgative — no less than half an 
ounce of the powdered ginger — the best aromatic and tonic that 
can be administered to cattle, and here peculiarly applicable 
from its influence on the muscular coat of the intestines, while 
the power of the purgative is, perhaps, principally exhausted on 
the mouths of the excretory ducts, while the impulse of the 
aromatic is often speedily diffused over other and distant parts of 
the frame. In addition to this is the fact, that when the medicine, 
from being carelessly administered, has for a while, been lost 
in the rumen, that half insensible viscus has at length been 
roused to action by the aromatic, and its contents, in an unusual 
and unnatural way, have been propelled through the maniplus and 
into the abomasum, and so purgation has at length been esta- 
blished, and the animal saved. 
I am glad that, with a little difference in the minutiae of 
practice, I am corroborated here by the opinion, of my friend 
Mr. Sewell, of Brighton. He refers to the sudden chills from 
exposure to cold. “I have found,” said he, “ they laboured 
under great prostration of strength, with constipated bowels and 
fever ; my practice was to give opening medicine, with, in the 
intervals between the physic, cordials to stimulate the stomach 
and induce the animal to feed, as there appeared great indiffer- 
ence to take food. Thick gruel was frequently given with the 
horn, with ginger and aniseed combined. From what I have 
seen of cattle under disease, I think they require and will do 
better with cordial than the horse, when given in certain and 
appropriate stages of disease.” These are valuable hints, and 
they are founded on the peculiar temperament of cattle, and the 
structure of their stomachs. We should neither of us, however. 
