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ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
The Process of Mischief . — The heat is rapidly abstracted from 
these neglected and abused animals bv the cold bed on which 
they lie, and the cold air around them. It is abstracted far more 
rapidly than it can be supplied, and the general sensibility, and 
every vital manifestation, is diminished, and becomes inactive; the 
power of voluntary motion is suspended — the nervous influence 
of the organicsystem is withdrawn — the vital current is arrested, 
and life is fled. One universal palsy leads on to, or is another 
word for, death*. If the full depressing effect of surrounding 
cold is not produced, yet the energy of the nervous system has 
been so fearfully impaired, that the stimulus, and the power of 
being acted upon, whether with reference to animal or organic 
life, are for awhile suspended ; and if indeed they ever return, 
they return slowly, and with considerably diminished energy. 
For many an hour, and often during many a day, the blood loiters, 
and the muscles are rigid, or their contractions are in a manner 
powerless ; and there follows a compound of rheumatism and of 
palsy — the last predominant and most obstinate. After all, the 
animal rarely regains its former condition and value, but con- 
tinues a mortifying and disgraceful exhibition of the careless- 
ness and inhumanity of the farmer. How much has he yet to 
learn with regard to the treatment of the lamb and its mother ! 
In some seasons the mortality among these animals forms no in- 
considerable item in the catalogue of his losses, and the circum- 
stances which contribute to general agricultural distress. 
* Some of the most appalling accounts on record of the rigidity suddenly 
produced by excessive cold, are contained in Labaume’s History of the dis- 
astrous campaign in Russia, translated some twenty years ago by the author 
of these Lectures, in order to wile away a few idle hours. 
The French army was retreating from Viasma “suffering yet more from 
the cold than from hunger. They abandoned their ranks to warm themselves 
by a fire hastily kindled; but when they would rise to depart, their frost- 
bitten limbs refused their office, and a partial insensibility crept over them. 
We heard some of them faintly bidding their last adieus to their friends and 
comrades — others, as they drew their last breath, pronounced the names of 
their mothers, their wives, their native country, which they were never more 
to see. The rigour of the frost soon seized their benumbed limbs, and pene- 
trated through their whole frame. Stretched on the road, we could distin- 
guish only the heaps of snow that covered them, and which at almost every 
step formed little undulations like so many graves.” 
They at length approached the Niemen. “Some had lost their hearing, 
others their speech, and many were reduced by excessive cold and hunger to 
a state of frantic stupidity. Some were so weak, that, unable to lift a piece of 
wood or roll a stone towards the fires which they had kindled, they sat upon 
the dead bodies of their comrades, and with a haggard countenance sted- 
fastly gazed upon the burning coals. No sooner was the fire extinguished, 
than these living spectres, no longer possessing the power to rise, fell by the 
side of those on whom they had sat.” 
