538 
HAMONT AND FISCHER ON THE 
end of July; nearer Cairo in August; in the environs of the 
capital in October and November; and during the months of 
December, January, and February, in the Delta. It is most 
obstinate, and continues longest, in the neighbourhood of the 
confluence of the waters : in Lower Egypt it lasts about 120 or 
130 days, and it disappears soonest, and is least fatal, when the 
rise of the Nile has not been considerable. 
Desolation and death accompany it wherever it passes. The 
Arabs say that this pest annually destroys sixteen thousand 
sheep in Egypt. Its victims usually perish on the twenty-filth, 
thirtieth, thirty-fifth, or fortieth day after the apparent attack. 
The symptoms which characterize it are the same in Egypt as 
in Europe. If an Arab shepherd is asked how he distinguishes 
this disease from all others, he replies that “ they have under 
the jaw a bag full of water; that they walk with difficulty ; have 
diarrhoea ; their wool falls off; they are dull, disinclined to move, 
and are almost constantly lying down ; sometimes a foetid matter 
of a variable colour, yellow, grey, or green, runs from the nose. 
The head and neck, and belly and limbs, swell; the eyes are red ; 
they become thin ; they eat and drink little when the disease 
is in an advanced state, but rumination continues for a consider¬ 
able period.” 
Chabert, in his excellent work, has described the symptoms 
of rot with much precision ; all that has been remarked by that 
accurate observer we have seen on the banks of the Nile. 
Hurtrel d’Arboval, in describing the symptoms of the rot, 
speaks of a frequent and wiry pulse, and vesicles on the tongue. 
We have had the opportunity of observing a great number of 
sheep, many times every day, and from the beginning to the 
termination of the disease; and we always found the pulse to be 
slow, small, feeble, and occasionally intermittent, and never 
were there any vesicles or redness on the tongue. 
Examination after death presented oedema of the whole body, 
or of the head and neck only ; wasting generally, and of the 
hind limbs particularly: warmth disappeared the moment life 
had fled. The skin was pale; the cellular tissue exhibited a 
transparent or pale yellow infiltration ; the muscles were softened 
and infiltrated ; layers of fat covered the parietes of the abdo¬ 
men, which was filled with a colourless fluid ; the stomach and 
intestines were remarkably pale; the liver was sound, or tuber¬ 
culous, or filled with hydatids; the bile was thin and oily; the 
kidneys were soft, and contained a very small quantity of blood ; 
the bladder was sometimes full and sometimes empty ; the 
parietes of the intestines were often much attenuated; the 
bloodvessels of the mesentery were faintly apparent; the 
