170 MR. youatt’s veterinary lectures. 
Treatment. —Here, even more than in the horse, it is necessary 
that your measures should be prompt and decisive. These sin¬ 
gular cracklings and tumours indicate a peculiarity about these 
animals which you should never forget. The vascular system is 
more than usually developed and powerful. Cattle were designed 
to vield us much nutriment even while living, and plenty of good 
muscle and fat after death. In proportion to the extra work 
thus required from the vessels most concerned with inflammation, 
is the tendency to inflammatory fever of every description, and 
to the speedy exhaustion of vital organic power. 
Venesection. —Bleeding will always be proper at the com¬ 
mencement of epidemic catarrh in cattle, regulated by the inten¬ 
sity of inflammation, or the apparent approach of debility, and 
by the effect produced while the blood continues to flow. An 
ox, in the early stage of inflammatory disease, will bear to lose 
a much greater quantity of blood than a horse; but the disease 
having advanced, the injury produced by too copious depletion 
is proportionably greater. 
Aperients. —Physic should immediately be administered. The 
sulphate of magnesia is the preferable aperient; common salt 
may be given ; but sulphur is scarcely powerful enough in the early 
stage. Some practitioners, however, give equal quantities of 
the sulphate of magnesia and sulphur, and, they imagine, with 
surer and safer effect. The usual dose of the Epsom salts would 
be a pound, followed up, if necessary, by half-pound doses at in¬ 
tervals of six hours, and assisted by injections. 
Probably from the peculiar structure of the stomachs of cat¬ 
tle, and the expansion of cnticular surface, and the comparatively 
small supply of bloodvessels and nerves to the stomachs and 
even the intestines on account of the previous and complete 
mechanical preparation of the food for digestion, there is not the 
powerful sympathy which exists in the horse between the tho¬ 
racic and abdominal viscera; and therefore, in the early stages of 
this disease, and although there may be evident chest affection, 
the mild aperients which we use for cattle may be administered 
with perfect safety. To aloes, however, I should object. This 
drug is uncertain in its operation on cattle—it purges only in 
large doses, and then it irritates and disposes to inflammation. 
Medicine and General Treatment. —The sedative medicines 
recommended for the horse should be administered to cattle, but 
only in half the quantity, and always in the form of a drink, 
for then alone they will pass immediately into the fourth or true 
stomach. In the treatment of cattle, even more than in that of 
the horse, attention to comfort is required. A warm, but not 
close or ill-ventilated, cow-house is indispensable. The powerful 
