300 ON PUERPERAL FEVER IN COWS, &C. 
disposing causes of the existing complaint must be minutely 
searched into, and whether found in the nature and quality of 
the food, the manner of feeding, the want of attention to the 
comfort and cleanliness of the animal, the impurity or the in¬ 
judicious use of the water given to them, or from what cause so¬ 
ever it may arise, the remedy must be applied to this also. 
It frequently happens that the proprietors of our various 
patients are not sufficiently well informed to understand the why 
and the wherefore” of the mode of treatment we propose to 
adopt, and are so anxious that the animal should eat something, 
that they will give them any thing for this purpose, however de¬ 
trimental to them, or opposed to the action of our remedies, un¬ 
less guarded by the most precise and preremptory directions on 
this head. A due attention must, therefore, be had to supplying 
the animal with sufficient gruels, &c., or whatsover in the shape 
of food we decide upon as most proper for the case, never leav¬ 
ing this matter, which is of great importance, uncertainly or un¬ 
decidedly expressed. On the subject of diet, will you admit of 
the following digression :—I remember being once called upon to 
attend a flock of sheep, belonging to a farmer, w'ho had spared 
no expense or trouble to bring them to the highest state of per¬ 
fection. I was shocked, on arriving at his farm, to find eight of 
his best and finest ewes lying in the folding yard ; they were, in 
fact, all that had lambed, and all had died, and the farmer him¬ 
self was in a state bordering on distraction. In this case, 
disease appeared to have despised and overleaped the ordinary 
course of inflammatory action, and gangrene appeared in every 
instance nearly coeval with the first symptoms of suffering. I 
immediately inquired particularly into the nature and mode of 
their feeding up to that period of time, and at once directed 
their removal to such a pasture on the farm as w'ould produce the 
greatest possible change in their diet. This w'as done at once; 
the ewes were lambing fast, and, after obliging the shepherd to 
cleanse his hands thoroughly, I staid with him a great part of 
the day to assist him, and to every ewe that lambed we immedi¬ 
ately administered bark, laudanum, and spt. aether nit. in gruel; 
and dressed the vagina with a mixture of sp. tereb., sp. vini 
recti., ol. lini, and ol. exeter.; and the pleasing result was, that 
after my arrival not a single ewe was lost. The farmer had 
been giving them an unlimited quantity of turnips on his best 
grass land, and the consequence was that predisposition to gan¬ 
grenous inflammation that I have noticed. 
It is now some years since ; but the remembrance of the grate¬ 
ful feelings exhibited by that man often recurs to my memory, 
amid the petty vexations incidental to our profession, with an 
