ON HEPATITIS IN THE OX. 
•23 
much debilitated, the above medicines may be combined with 
small doses of aromatics, vegetable tonics, and the liquor ammonia? 
acetatis, which materially assist the recovery of the animal. 
If the yellow tinge remains apparent, when diarrhoea supervenes, 
the expulsion of the feces is usually accompanied by considerable 
straining. In this stage of the complaint equal parts of calomel 
and opium, given daily in small doses, often succeed ; or, if those 
medicaments should not arrest the purging, the compound kino 
powder forms a useful adj unct. Good wheat-flour gruel may be 
substituted for water, and sweet hay is, perhaps, the best kind of 
food. If the purging should not cease when the yellow tinge begins 
to disappear and the appetite to return, absorbents and astringents 
are occasionally of some service. 
When the disease is at first recognized by violent purging, one 
proportion of calomel and two of opium may be given in very 
small doses, varying the intervals (as circumstances may require) 
from two to twelve hours, until relief is afforded: but copious 
draughts made thick with gum acacia and arrow root, or other 
mucilaginous fluids, are also beneficial; and clysters composed of 
starch and opium are of much service in allaying the irritation of 
the rectum, which often accompanies the expulsion of these bilious 
and fetid alvine excretions. 
During the treatment of the disease the patient should be kept 
under cover and have warm water to drink, and, when rumination 
and the sensation of hunger return, it is best to avoid all kinds of 
food of a highly nutritious quality, and feed sparingly with grass 
or hay. It is also necessary to caution the owner of the con¬ 
valescent animal not to turn it into too luxuriant a pasture, as a 
bare one is, perhaps, the best tonic. 
Hepatitis has various terminations, but, of course, the most de¬ 
sirable one is resolution, as every other, except gangrene, consti¬ 
tutes a variety of the chronic disease, of which every year’s 
practice must afford a considerable number of cases to those vete¬ 
rinarians who attend to the diseases of neat cattle. Many of 
those ill-thriven beasts which are said by some graziers to liave 
the dry rot, and by others are called dunces, labour under either 
structural or functional derangement of the liver. 
In chronic hepatitis, the beast is commonly low in flesh—hide¬ 
bound—the skin slightly tinged with yellow, from which a scurf rises 
that gives the hair a staring dirty appearance—the eyes dull, and 
considerably sunk in the orbits—the ears drooping—the countenance 
altogether dejected—the animal feeds sparingly, is disinclined to 
walk, and when made to move, the action is listlessly performed. 
Although the animal is feeding in a succulent pasture, the bowels 
are often confined and the excrement is voided stiff and glazed, 
