332 MR. YOUATTS VETERINARY LECTURES. 
The degree of animal temperature will likewise guide you as to 
the existence and extent of fever. You usually ascertain this in 
the horse by putting your finger into the mouth of your patient; 
you must not do so here, at least with a horned animal, lest 
the farmer should suspect that you knew not how to handle a 
beast. You would obtain the degree of temperature as accu¬ 
rately as you would in the horse, but the farmer has found out 
another place where, with greater ease and almost equal accuracy, 
he obtains it,—at the base of the horn. I shall have to shew 
you that the bone of the horn is by far the most vascular one in 
the frame of the ox,—that it is perforated by innumerable blood¬ 
vessels, and that the horn, properly speaking, is either a pro¬ 
longation of the cuticle, or is most intimately united with it, 
and at its base not thicker than it; and therefore when grasped 
by the head, giving the temperature of the blood flowing imme¬ 
diately underneath. The farmer knows no other place at which 
he may ascertain the heat of the blood ; and you must humour 
him by doing that which all who are much used to cattle inva¬ 
riably do. 
Proper Medicine , and Dose .—You will be guided by the de¬ 
gree of fever. If little or none is indicated, a warm mash, and 
a dose or two of cooling medicine, will probably set all right. 
The medicine will be that which I have recommended for the 
horse -the digitalis, tartarized antimony, and nitre, in the same 
proportions, but only in half the quantity. I would lay this 
down as a rule, that the ox, into whose true digestive stomach 
your medicine rnay be introduced at once when given in the 
form of a drink, requires but half the quantity which you would 
give to the horse, in whose half vascular, half cuticular stomach it 
is received. Our continental neighbours, and some English 
practitioners, erroneously reverse this. 
The dose must depend on the degree of fever; but in usual 
cases, and for a moderate-sized animal, I should consider half a 
drachm of digitalis, three quarters of a drachm of tartarized an¬ 
timony, and two drachms of nitre, a medium dose. And, once 
for all, I would state, that cattle medicines, unless those which 
are designed to be stomachic, and I do not know that I should 
often except them, should be given in the form of drink. They 
then pass at once into the fourth or true stomach, and produce 
their effect; but a ball, by its weight, breaks through the 
curiously-constructed oesophagean canal which I shall have to 
describe to you, and enters the cuticular macerating reservoir, 
the rumen, where the only effect it can produce will be a mis¬ 
chievous one, for it will give an unpleasant taste to the food, and 
nauseate the animal, and lead to the cessation of rumination, and 
