430 
ILLUSTRATIONS OF DISEASE. 
mation of the mesenteric portion of‘ the peritoneum, for there 
was not the slightest sign of it on that which covered the in- 
testine. 
This young animal had been removed from an elevated and 
dry to a low and moist situation. In its former locality, after it 
had been running about with its dam on the hill, and then, tired 
with its gambols, lay down, its bed was dry; here it was damp 
and cold. Ihe animal was chilled, and the peritoneal inflamma¬ 
tion was the consequence of the natural re-action. It was pre¬ 
cisely the disease, and with the same morbid appearances, from 
which the farmer loses many a lamb, when he suffers them to lie 
about upon a moist and chilling soil soon after they are yeaned. 
CASE II. 
Oct . 27, 1833.—A young porcupine, a week old, was appa¬ 
rently well yesterday, but this morning it would not eat, and 
could scarcely be induced to move. A teaspoonful of the castor 
oil mixture (castor oil 3 parts, syrup of buckthorn 2 parts, syrup 
of white poppies 1 part) was given, and another ordered to be 
administered in an hour afterwards; but ere that time arrived the 
animal died. 
There was considerable inflammation of the peritoneal covering 
and the muscular coat of a portion of the ileum; I should have 
thought far from sufficient to have caused death, and yet there 
was no other apparent cause of death. 
Of the cause of this inflammation I should hesitate to hazard 
a conjecture, if I had not several times seen something of the 
same kind in the lamb. Cold was not concerned, for the cage 
was in a situation sufficiently warm; nor had there been any other 
change of food, except that the mother had been somewhat libe¬ 
rally supplied, and that from the notion, confirmed by some natu¬ 
ralists, that the female porcupine, urged by hunger, will not 
hesitate to devour her young; and this little one was scarcely dead 
ere she seized it, and seemed as if she would have eagerly de¬ 
voured it. Perhaps a little less food maybe given another time. 
When young sucking lambs have been turned with their dams 
into somewhat too luxuriant pasture, I have known them die as 
suddenly, and present after death precisely this peritoneal and 
muscular inflammation, often indeed accompanied by constriction, 
and occasionally by intussusception ; and yet I have always, in 
my own mind, been disposed to attribute the fatality quite as 
much, or more, to the influence of cold and ungenial situation 
than to change of food, for the external coats of the intestines 
were principally or only affected. 
