1 2(i 
ANIMAL PATHOLOGY. 
Locality, Causes , and Treatment . — This disease was usually 
confined to poor and overstocked farms, and was most frequent 
in March and April, when the winter’s food was gone, and that 
of the spring had not sufficiently grown. It was often sudden 
in its attack, like other species of palsy. After an unusually 
cold night several of the sheep would be found in the morning 
trembling, or down and unable to rise. Some would fall, and 
die in a few minutes. Others would drop, and lie many hours 
or days shivering or struggling. In some it would appear in the 
form of, or soon become, palsy of the hind legs ; in more, one 
side only would be attacked, and others would be lame in one 
leg only. It seldom attacked sheep in good condition, but the 
weak and half-starved ones were its principal victims. Warmth, 
bleeding, and physic, were the only remedies, but in most cases 
the evil was past all cure. 
Hogg's Description of it. — The Ettrick Shepherd gives the best 
account of it. He says that fifty years ago its ravages were so 
considerable that the farmer believed the disease to be infectious, 
as well as hereditary; and that it was as unsafe to buy from a 
stock in which the th warter-ill had appeared, as from one that was 
liable to the rot. Mr. Lawrence, quoting from Lisle, says, ‘‘some 
years the sheep will be apt to be taken with the disease they call 
the shaking; some farms are more subject to it than others : it is 
a weakness which seizes their hinder quarters so that they cannot 
rise up when they are down. I know no cure for it. Some years 
a hundred of a flock have died of it.” 
Variety of the Disease. — A very similar complaint used to be 
prevalent, and is still observed, on several parts of Salisbury 
Plain. From an unusual coldness of the season, or on certain 
exposed and bleak situations, or from starvation, or neglect 
of various kinds, an endemic or epidemic disease breaks out. 
It commences with slight staggering; a certain degree of stu- 
pidity; a gradual wasting; a weakness of the loins; the animal 
continually slipping and falling ; dragging his hind legs behind 
him more or less ; one leg evidently more affected than the other ; 
occasional grinding of the teeth ; the appetite unaffected ; di- 
arrhoea; death. The post-mortem examination presenting usually 
softening of the spinal marrow in some part of it, and mostly 
about the lumbar region ; but not unfrequently hydatids in the 
brain, sometimes one or two considerable ones, at other times 
groups or bunches of them in the ventricles, or in the scissure 
between the lobes. 
Connected with Hydatids. — I confess that I am much disposed 
to attribute these cases of real or spurious palsy to pressure on 
the brain by hydatids; and those hydatids, if not cnving their 
