ROT IN SHEEP. 
591 
boval, supereminently skilful! u Bleeding will be even more out 
of place when applied to an animal that does not appear to have 
vital energy sufficient to contract an inflammatory affection of 
much intensity—an animal whom the least circumstance drives 
to atony.” 
See here our author quite at a stand ! 
Physiological physician! tell us, if you please, what you 
mean by atony ! Is it not rather the effect of internal inflam¬ 
mation ? You have made an inflammation spread itself from the 
mucous membranes of the intestines, and through the liver and 
the spleen, as far as the serous membranes, where it has fixed its 
last abode, in order to cause a serous fluid to be eftused in the 
splanchnic cavities. You have condemned as heretics those who 
have dared to pronounce the word “ asthenic.” W hat will the 
farmers, the cultivators, and more especially the cavalry officers 
say ? But, without subterfuge ! where the malady is inflamma¬ 
tory, as you have gravely announced it to be, and when the an¬ 
tiphlogistic treatment is, without exception, the only one that is 
effectual, then, abjuring your former principles, admit with us 
these alterations of the blood which you yourself have seen in 
the dead bodies of cachectic animals. 
Let us hope that in his next edition M. Hurtrel d Arboval 
will be more clear; a better logician, and less of a physiologist. 
The administration of soup, as recommended by Professor 
Dupuy, was successful in the Delta on a dozen sheep that had 
been ill eight days. All these animals had diarrhoea, the belly 
distended, and a little cedematous enlargement under the throat. 
The proprietor, who had long been known to us, wished us, for 
his satisfaction, to follow his directions. A soup was made with 
the carcasses of dead sheep, and each of those that had the rot 
drank from a pound to two pounds of it every four-and-twenty 
hours. In ten days the cure was complete. We were far from 
being always so successful; on the contrary, we failed in the 
majority of cases ; but we had then as our patients, sheep w T hich 
the fellahs were about to slaughter. 
In the interior of the provinces of Lower Egypt we never had 
opportunity to treat the disease in its advanced stages; for the 
Bedouins, as has been already said, cured their rotted sheep by 
transporting them into the midst of the sands. 
The rot, then, causes a dissolution of the blood, and this is 
produced by unwholesome food and watery plants. To remove 
the cause is the first natural indication of cure. Afterwards, it 
is necessary to supply the sheep with substances really nutritive, 
mingled with salt, and contained in as small a compass as pos¬ 
sible; and, in a still later stage, soups of animal food, or of 
