AMONG CATTLE IN IRELAND IN 1842. 
583 
practice of confining them in the usual manner is bad, at least 
under the present circumstances. By having their heads placed 
in the ordinary way, many of the affected animals are obliged to 
stand or lie in positions unfavourable to their ease— ruminants, 
like man, frequently varying their posture to relieve themselves 
from pain. 
Blood-letting . — The abstraction of blood for the alleviation of 
disease, although a practice of the most remote antiquity, is by 
no means sufficiently well understood, with respect to the time 
when it is necessary to be had recourse to, and the quantity 
which ought to be abstracted. An animal labouring under an in- 
flammatory attack can bear, without an impression being made on 
his system, to lose a much greater quantity of blood than one per- 
fectly free from disease. A cow attacked with acute pleurisy could 
lose with impunity much more blood than would prove inevitably 
fatal to another animal of the same description in a state of per- 
fect health. Neither will all diseases endow the frame with equal 
power of resisting the effects from loss of blood — some diminish- 
ing it to a great extent: thus diarrhoea renders a cow unable to 
lose half the quantity of blood that she might with impunity, 
were she free from all disease. It is fortunate, however, that 
just in proportion as it is necessary to bleed, in order to subdue in- 
flammation, so, in an equal ratio, is the degree of power possessed 
by the animal’s constitution to contend against the effects of the 
loss of blood increased. For instance, in inflammation of the lungs, 
it is imperatively required that a large quantity of blood should be 
abstracted, while in diarrhoea the animal should not lose any of 
the vital fluid. Where bleeding is necessary, the jugular vein 
should be freely opened, the animal’s head being held high, and 
the stream of blood permitted to flow until the pulse wavers, or 
the animal becomes faint. As to prescribing the loss of a certain 
number of quarts, it is an unpardonable absurdity into which 
those who have written on the subject have almost invariably 
lapsed. The manner in which the animal bears the loss, as the 
vital stream flows from his vein, is the only true indication of the 
exact extent to which the depletion should be carried. If the 
intensity of the disease requires the abstraction of a large quan- 
tity of blood, the animal will bear the loss without danger; but 
if it do not, the symptoms of distress quickly setting in after the 
vein is opened, plainly indicate that it is time to desist. 
In the great majority of cases, bleeding is necessary for the treat- 
ment of the present distemper : but all cases will not bear it well 
alike. Where the mucous membrane of the bronchia is the part 
affected without any other complication, so much blood cannot be 
abstracted as where there is also pleurisy. It is fortunate, how- 
ever, that the symptoms evinced by the animal, as the blood flows. 
