THE POISONING OF SEVERAL LAMBS 
532 
I immediately ordered the surviving lambs to be removed ; 
abstracted blood from the angular vein in those that were worst ; 
and ordered drinks and injections composed of a decoction of 
linseed. 
Three of the lambs died after this, but the others were pre- 
served and are doing well*. 
Rec. de Med. Vet . Juin 1836. 
W e, too, deem this an interesting case ; not as exhibiting the 
production, but the effect of nitre. The system of sheep-houses, 
and of cotting the sheep, is nearly abandoned, even in Hereford- 
shire itself; and comparatively little nitre is produced in our 
country by any chemical decomposition or admixture. Our 
supply is from our Eastern colonies, and it is with the medicinal 
properties of nitre that we are alone concerned. 
We use it, and with much advantage, to abate febrile action. It 
is evidently diuretic, and thus lessens the quantity of the circulat- 
ing medium; and it evidently diminishes morbidly increased tem- 
perature, and thus abates the number and the power of the pulsa- 
tions. Combined with digitalis and antimonial powder, it is a well- 
known and very good fever medicine ; but it has probably occurred 
to many practitioners, that the doses in which it is administered 
are often too large, and the exhibition of it too long continued. 
It is excellent in the early stage of almost every febrile disease: 
its power is great at the commencement of influenza in all its 
thousand modifications and forms ; but the question has occa- 
sionally presented itself to the mind of the surgeon, is all that 
long-continued nausea — that abhorrence of food — that uneasiness 
and irritable state of the bowels which he witnesses — are these the 
natural character of the disease, or the effect of the medicine? I 
recollect a case in which I was third in attendance on a horse ; nitre 
entered into the composition of the medicine which I employed, and 
I found afterwards that both my predecessors had used it. The 
horse was weak, loathing his food, frequently straining both to 
stale and to dung ; and I was about to give small doses of opium, 
when 1 was called upon by the somewhat fidgetty owner to sur- 
render the case to a fourth practitioner. He gave his favourite 
* This case of M. Saussol appears to us very interesting, and ought to en- 
gage the attention of veterinary surgeons. Many such cases, we doubt not, 
although not recognized, are continually occurring. The nitrate of potash, in 
Europe at least, is produced by the contact of air charged with animal matters 
with moist walls and rubbish, and this too often occurs in our sheep-houses 
where the air is impregnated more than any where else with the perspirable 
matter of the animals that inhabit it. When, as in the present case, the 
walls are built against the ground or rock, the production of nitre is espe- 
cially favoured . — Note of the Editor of the Recueil. 
