186 
ON DYSENTERY IN CATTLE. 
quent, small, and hard; beating at the rate of seventy or eighty 
pulsations per minute. In extreme cases, the febrile action set 
in from the first, accompanied with violent diarrhoea and tenes¬ 
mus; the faecal discharge being intolerably offensive, and con¬ 
sisting of a thin, watery, dirty, green-coloured fluid, full of 
shreds of coagulable lymph, mucus, and coagulated blood. In 
some, it consisted of a blackish green mucous discharge; in 
others, it was principally mucus, coagulable lymph, and blood, 
with, comparatively speaking, no portion of faeces along with it. 
The extremities were alternately hot and cold; the surface of the 
nose sometimes dry, at others having a dew upon it; occasionally 
during the cold fit the eyes would become sunk in their orbits, 
the features collapsed, the nose, inner part of the lips, and 
tongue of a deadly pallidness, which would be followed up by 
reaction, and a consequent hot fit again. The bowels were 
affected, in some of the extreme cases, with colicky pains; and in 
every case there was obstinate constipation and obstruction in 
the second and third stomachs. If relief was not afforded, the 
disease terminated fatally on the third or fourth day. 
The causes appeared to be great atmospheric changes, accom¬ 
panied with much moisture operating upon a frame already pre¬ 
disposed by living upon bad fodder. 
The morbid appearances which presented themselves after 
death were, violent inflammation of the mucous membrane of the 
stomachs and bowels, particularly that portion lining the colon 
and rectum; presenting, in some cases, quite a dark crimson 
hue. The second and third stomachs, particularly the manyplus, 
were quite blocked up with herbivorous matter, consolidated and 
hardened to such a degree as to require the force of a hatchet to 
cut it in two : in fact, it was as dry and hard as if baked in an 
oven. The gall-bladder was completely gorged with bile. 
From the above statement, the disease appears evidently to 
have been of an inflammatory type; the indication of cure was 
therefore, to bleed, but perhaps cautiously, in its early stages, 
according to the tone and feel of the pulse; to remove the ob¬ 
struction in the stomachs, and get the bowels into regular action 
by the administration of aperients, such as (even at the first 
onset) aloes, followed up by sulphate of soda and castor oil; 
farther to abate the inflammation of the mucous membrane, and 
the febrile action, by giving saline medicines, combined with 
citric or diluted nitric acid (the former I found to have a very 
grateful and beneficial effect); and, to lessen the irritability and 
inordinate action of the large intestines, by injecting frequently 
through the twenty-four hours, clysters composed of starch and 
flour boiled in water, to which was added, a small quantity of 
