THE POULTKY BOOK. 
333 
Treatment . — Local applications are perfectly useless ; but the most rapid 
improvement follows from the administration of from three to eight grains of 
citrate of iron daih;, and a due supply of nutritious food, care being taken 
to select such sub Jtances as are flesh-producing, and not fattening — wheat, 
barley, and a due 'iupply of worms, or, in default, a little chopped meat, being 
preferable to rice or Indian corn. 
RHEUMATISM AND CRAMP. 
Spnptoins . — These diseases, though differing in their nature, arise so constantly 
from the same cause, and are so readily removed by the same treatment, that 
I have placed them together. A disinclination and inability to move the limbs, 
evidently not arising from mere weakness, or a permanently cramped condition 
of the toes, are sufficiently characteristic. 
Causes . — Both disorders are caused by exposure to cold and wet, and the 
tendency to them may be much counteracted by preventing the fowls, during 
their earliest chickenhood, from running among wet grass early in the morning. 
Treatment . — Good food, and a warm dry habitation, are generally effectual. 
When chickens are hatched at such times as January and February, it must 
not be expected that any treatment can counteract perfectly the unnatural 
circumstances under which they are placed. If exposed, they suffer from cold ; 
and if confined in close rooms, the want of fresh air, natural green and insect 
food, produce unfortunate results. 
Bheumatism is not unfrequently followed by inflammation of the heart, a 
disease which in the fowl is seldom suspected until so far advanced as to be 
necessarily fatal. 
GOUT. 
Symptoms. — Swelling of the feet, attended with a great degree of heat. 
Treatment. — We have seen several cases of this disease in Cochins, and 
have been successful in some cases in removing it by employing calomel, one 
grain at night, and three drops of wdne of colchicum twice a day, care being 
taken as to warmth, diet, &c. 
BUMBLE FOOT. 
Symptoms . — Dorkings are more especially subject to this disease. It com- 
mences by a small wart-like body on the ball of the foot. This enlarges, and 
at last ulcerates, producing so much mischief that the bird becomes lame and 
useless. 
Causes . — The cause seems to be some slight injury from pressure on sharp 
stones; this sets up a low inflammatory action on the thick skin of the foot, 
which is followed by the formation of the swelling. The disease does not 
originate in the tendons, nor even in the dense fascial covering, but in the cutis. 
Treatment. — From the low state of vitality in the feet of birds, and the 
