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ON THE DRACONCULE (jstronsylus 1Maria aut veinulosus?) 
OF LAMBS. 
By the Baron de Reck. 
You received last year a report from M. B. de Montelon, on 
the disease in sheep occasioned by the (worm) draconcule, so 
frequent in our lands. I have had, for the last fifteen years, very 
painful experience of this disease, which has attacked my flock 
six different times, and has carried off about fifteen hundred of the 
finest and strongest of my lambs. 
My experience on this subject may give some interest to my 
communication, and especially as I believe that I have discovered 
a specific against this fatal malady. 
The complaint, so far as I have had experience of it, attacks 
sheep only in their first year, and commences always with diarrhoea, 
which assumes a chronic form, and seems to single out the finest 
and best of the flock. Every year the malady is first developed 
in that portion of my flock which seems to be the most promising. 
A very few only of those who are attacked by this diarrhoea re¬ 
covered ; the others declined every day, losing their appetite, be¬ 
coming thinner, and at length dying debilitated and exhausted. 
In some cases where there was little hope of cure, I ordered the 
lambs to be killed and opened, and found the lungs and the 
liver of a very pale colour, and eaten into, as were the stomach 
and intestines, by a very thin white worm, about an inch and a 
half or two inches long, and which has often been described. 
These worms were seen when the lambs were opened immediately 
after death ; but if they were left several hours, no trace of the 
worms was discoverable, and the diseased aspect of the lungs and 
the liver alone remained. These organs were then covered with 
a w 7 hite mucus, which I believe to be formed by the worms pass¬ 
ing quickly into decomposition, because, when the worms ap¬ 
peared, the lungs and liver were dry, and no mucus was observed 
about them. 
The causesof this disease appear to be (so far as my experience 
goes) in summer, high and dry pasturage; or in winter, the hay 
from the same situations. It is easy to prevent the inconvenience 
occasioned by the latter (hay from a dry and elevated soil), because 
trefoil, and the produce of low and grassy meadow's, and particu¬ 
larly grains and roots, never give rise to the disease. In sum¬ 
mer it is more difficult, because we have not always a sufficient 
quantity of pasturage, and change of pasturage seems to be the 
only preservative, and also a means of cure ; although, if the 
vol. v. 4 a 
