546 
HOVEN IN CATTLE. 
the veterinary surgeon is too far off to hope for relief from more 
skilful treatment in time. 
If you should feel inclined to insert it in j'our valuable Periodi¬ 
cal, and you can spare a space for it, it is very much at your 
service. 
I am, Sir, your’s truly, 
Peter Boughton. 
W. Percivall, Esq., 
Editor of “ The Veterinarian.” 
Hounslow, Sept. 2d, 1849. 
Sir,— Cows and oxen are very subject, from being incautiously 
turned into damp clover or rich pasture, to become hoven or blown, 
or, as it is often significantly called, “ dew blown,” a term quaintly 
expressive of the cause of the disease, and of its preventive remedy. 
So sudden are these attacks, and so rapid and fatal are they in 
their progress, that, unless relief be very quickly obtained, there is 
no chance of saving the animal. I have very frequently felt much 
pained to find the animals dead which I have been called suddenly 
to attend to; and my attention has long been directed to some simple 
means of relief which might with safety be placed in the hands of 
the agriculturist: it is, therefore, purely in the hope of being ser¬ 
viceable to those who are so unfortunate as to have their stock so 
affected that I trouble you with this letter, trusting to your anxiety 
to benefit the agriculturist by its insertion in your widely-spread 
Journal. 
There are very many means which a veterinary surgeon may 
employ with advantage in this disease, and these remedies will 
naturally depend upon the urgency of the case, the duration of the 
attack, the nature of the food, and various other circumstances. 
It is not to be expected that a farmer could attempt to use these 
remedies, and to change them as occasion would require; as a 
person who has not closely and most carefully studied the peculiar 
nature of the animal cannot possess the requisite knowledge to 
enable him to do so, and there is no animal wherein the gradations 
and phases of health and disease require to be more intimately 
known than in the ox tribe. 
The principal remedies made use of in this complaint are, the 
introduction of the oesophagus tube (or choke~pipe, as it is com¬ 
monly termed) into the stomach : this instrument, however highly 
useful as it is in the hands of the experienced veterinary surgeon, 
is often very dangerous when used by the inexperienced operator, 
and especially in this disease, when the great swelling which takes 
place in the stomach compresses the oesophagus in such a manner 
that it is often extremely difficult to attempt its introduction, and 
numbers of fatal accidents result from the attempt to use it in these 
