267 
ON THE DISEASES OF FOWLS. 
By , M. R.C.S., Bath. 
In your number for October last I observe that there are two 
papers descriptive of a verminous disease existing amongst poul- 
try. In the first paper, written by a gentleman in Somersetshire, 
the worms, it appears, were found in the trachea ; and in the se- 
cond paper, written by M. Blavette, they were detected in the 
alimentary canal. Now, Mr. Editor, you observe in a note ap- 
pended to the latter gentleman’s paper, that “ your readers must 
have noticed the different location assigned to the parasites by 
these two writers, and at the same time assert that you have your 
opinion,” &c. 
Whether or not these parasitic animals were found in both of 
the situations as mentioned by these writers, I am not at all pre- 
pared to answer; but from the symptoms (if we are to judge in 
these cases by the symptoms, as well as by the morbid anatomy) 
mentioned by the two gentlemen, I am inclined to think that the 
worms might have been situated in different organs or tubes, con- 
stituting, therefore, two diseases ; the principal diagnostic symp- 
tom of which is that mentioned by the first writer on the subject, 
viz. “ it commences by something like an attempt to cough, and 
this increases until there is a constant gaping for breath in the 
chickens.” Now I can readily imagine with this writer, that, 
when these worms get to a certain size, they suffocate the chickens 
by congregating into a mass. In the second paper no symptom 
of the kind is mentioned. 
In this part of the country the disease described by the country 
gentleman is familiarly known by the name of the (< pip.” The 
ravages it makes in certain seasons in some farm-yards are some- 
times very great. With regard to treatment, a farmer in this 
county once informed me that he seldom lost a patient in this dis- 
ease. If on further investigation of this complaint it turns out, as 
your anonymous correspondent asserts, that the parasitic ani- 
mal is found in the windpipe, I know of no remedy which 
would be more likely to effect a cure than the one the farmer 
invariably adopts, which is this : — he takes a common peck mea- 
sure, places the chickens in it, then covers it over with a cloth, and 
blows the smoke of tobacco into it, which he does in the following 
way : — he gets a tobacco pipe, and lights a little tobacco, which he 
places at the bottom of the bowl ; he then moderately fills the pipe, 
covers it over with a little coarse linen, and lightly blows from 
the opposite end of the pipe, after placing it in the peck, when, of 
