484 MR. YOUATTS VETERINARY LECTURES. 
manent cure will be few and far between. Two, four, or six 
months may elapse, and both the owner and the practitioner may 
persuade themselves that all is safe; but, under some peculiar 
circumstance of irritation, or, perhaps, at a moment altogether 
unsuspected, the fit may return and endanger the life of the 
rider or driver. It will, therefore, be your duty to speak plainly 
and promptly on this head; and if the animal is not peculiarly 
valuable, to press the propriety of parting with it, and the abso¬ 
lute necessity of destroying the patient after the first relapse. 
Except the animal is young, and the disease of recent date, I can 
hardly conceive how you would be ever justified in treating the 
case. 
CATTLE. 
This sad malady is far more prevalent among oxen and steers, 
and sometimes among calves, than in the horse; and yet it has 
been observed that a milch cow is rarely or never affected by it. 
So much of the food of the cow being devoted to the nutriment of 
their offspring, or of man, we cannot well conceive of the possi¬ 
bility of that plethoric state or deranged circulation by which 
epilepsy is usually caused. 
Symptoms .—Young cattle are the usual victims here, as might 
be readily expected. The premonitory symptoms are as obscure 
as in the horse; or, perhaps, they are as deficient in cattle as in 
the horse. There will, perhaps, be a little previous dulness or 
heaviness, but that will rarely be observed, or it will be re¬ 
garded as accidental, or connected with some other and different 
disease. The beast begins all at once to stagger. He usually 
moans piteously, and, as the fit approaches, the moaning changes 
to a fearful bellowing. The convulsions are more diffused and 
more violent than in the horse—the dreadful labour of respira¬ 
tion, and the contraction of the abdominal muscles are frightful— 
the mouth is filled with frothy fluid, tinged with the colour of the 
food, and many particles of food mingling with it, and the 
feces and the urine are discharged involuntarily. 
The duration of the fit is uncertain ; but, as in the horse, the 
convulsions gradually cease, and all is for a moment quiet—the 
beast gets up—looks around him with wonderment and sus¬ 
picion—slowly and cautiously joins his companions, and then 
begins to graze again, as if nothing had occurred. 
Serious Nature of the Disease .—The evil, however, does not 
end here. The young beast is a far more plethoric subject than 
the ox—the usual course of the blood is more easily deranged 
and determined to the brain, and the habit of fits is too readily 
formed ; and not merely of fits occurring at irregular and distant 
