ON WOOD-EVIL AND MOOR-ILL. 
1)24 
Symptoms . — The first appearance of wood-evil is a staring of 
the coat, and a seeming adherence of the whole of the external 
integument to the ribs below, so much so, that it can scarcely 
be raised by the fingers ; the belly is also tucked up, and the 
animal is gradually and daily losing flesh ; the bowels are con- 
fined from the earliest appearance of the disease to its termina- 
tion, and sometimes very obstinately so : constipation is a re- 
gular attendant of wood-evil, let it occur where it will. The 
appetite is, at best, capricious : the animal will pick up stones, 
pieces of iron, bone, &c. and will grind them in her mouth for 
several hours successively ; she will also readily seize, and 
greedily devour, all the linen she can possibly get at ; and like- 
wise very eagerly swallow all the oldest and filthiest urine in her 
way, and this she prefers to the purest water. 
These symptoms are succeeded by a stiffness in one or more 
parts of the body, but usually in the fore extremities, the should- 
ers or the chest, and this often shifting from limb to limb. 
Sometimes intense lameness will ensue, and this likewise shifting 
from joint to joint. When the patient is induced to move, she 
utters a kind of interrupted moan or groan, expressive of the 
agony she feels. There is also a singular cracking noise to be 
heard when she walks, as if the ends of the bones of every joint 
were removing out of and returning into their sockets at each 
step she takes. The secretion of milk is now lessened, and the 
animal refuses to eat her usual quantity of food. 
The disease, if not arrested in its progress, assumes a different 
form. The animal begins to heave at the flanks, and that some- 
times violently, and the pulse is accelerated occasionally to 
more than 100 beats in a minute : the bowels, which all along 
have been confined, are still more so now ; the secretion of milk 
almost ceases ; the animal seldom ruminates, and can scarcely be 
induced to eat any thing. 
Treatment . — I have but little to say concerning the medical 
treatment of this disease. A few doses of laxative stomachic 
medicine, with a change of pasture, and the insertion of a seton 
in the dewlap, frequently comprise almost the whole of the treat- 
ment of wood-evil, when it is taken before those symptoms of 
irritability appear of which I have made mention ; and after this 
I have always successfully, treated it by having recourse to 
bleeding, blistering, and sedative aperient medicine. 
