510 
DISEASES OF CATTLE. 
one or two months before they calve, which prevents the disease 
in most instances. 
I have attended cows that have taken chills when first turned 
out to grass, after being housed through the winter and spring. 
They, too, have lost the use of their limbs, and have lain, except 
when slung, for a fortnight and three weeks before they recovered. 
By the country people the disease was called tail-sooken> and their 
practice was to put a seton into the lower part or middle of the 
tail, and to give drenches, of what I know not, and I have my 
doubts if they did. I found they laboured under great prostra¬ 
tion of strength, with constipated bowels and fever. My practice 
was to give opening medicine, with, in the intervals between the 
physic, cordials to stimulate the stomach and induce the ani¬ 
mal to feed, as there appeared great indifference to take food. 
Thick gruel was frequently given with the horn, with ginger and 
anise-seed, &c. combined. From what I have seen in cattle under 
disease, I think they require and will do better with cordial than 
the horse, when given in certain and appropriate stages of 
disease. 
I kept them in moderately warm places, and applied sheep¬ 
skins over their loins. In one or two of the cases I bled where 
fever ran high; and all recovered: one or two remained lame for 
some months. Several of them were in calf at the time; calved 
down, and did well afterwards. 
The disease called Quarter Evil , I have seen in Somersetshire 
and Devonshire. The young stock are most subject to it that are 
feeding in the most luxuriant pastures, and those that are grow¬ 
ing and making flesh fastest, so that it suddenly attacks the finest 
and best first. The grazier discovers the disease by observing the 
animal a little dull, and upon feeling over the skin finds a crack¬ 
ling under it, as if inflated with air ; when this has taken place, 
I have been told by all experienced breeders that I have conversed 
with, that they never knew one recover. I examined several that 
I saw die, and found extravasation of blood into the cellular 
membrane, and in different parts of the thoracic and abdominal 
viscera, and, in some, upon the brain. 
The mode of treatment to prevent the disease when young 
stock are growing and thriving unusually fast, is to give a purga¬ 
tive drench and put setons into their dewlaps, and sometimes 
remove them into short feed. I have seen the Blane attack poor 
milch cows very suddenly. Upon examining the mouth I have 
found it full of blisters, and the tongue the same, and likewise 
the rectum, attended with fever, constipated bowels, and great 
prostration of strength. I believe cattle, generally, under disease 
lose the power of standing sooner than the horse: sometimes 
