POISONING BY COLCHICUM. 
437 
insignificant—seem scarcely sufficient to explain the result. 
The only symptoms described are dejection and loss of appe¬ 
tite, and as these are common to nearly every serious disease, 
they afford us no light here. It appears there had been 
several thunderstorms in the neighbourhood on the 27th 
and 28th ult., and this circumstance seems to have given rise 
to the suggestion that these cattle had been struck by the 
lightning. But there is nothing in the facts to support this 
hypothesis, even for a moment. 
“The fact that the animals were first observed standing 
together, and on the evening of the storm, proves nothing; 
and the circumstance of five or six out of a flock of cattle 
falling amiss at the same time, is too common an occurrence 
to need peculiar consideration, and as readily explained by 
many other suppositions as by that of lightning. Lightning, 
it must be borne in mind, destroys life by a sudden shock to 
the brain and nervous system ; and if death is not almost 
immediate in cases of animals struck by lightning, they gene¬ 
rally—I think I may say nearly always—recover. When 
the shock has not been sufficiently severe to destroy life, its 
effects are like those of severe nervous disorders,— prostration, 
insensibility, paralysis, for a time. 
“But no such symptoms were found in the cases in ques¬ 
tion. The animals were discovered standing up, they appear 
to have been all along sufficiently sensible to ordinary im¬ 
pressions, and they continued to move about with perfect ease 
and freedom. There was no external mark of violence to 
indicate the passage of the electric fluid—in a word there is 
not one peculiar feature in the whole case, as far as experience 
or science has taught us, in the least degree consistent with 
this conjecture. To suppose, then, that the malady under 
which these animals suffered was in any respect the effect of 
lightning, is to assign to this agent another and a more subtle 
power than any which' has hitherto been noticed in science. 
The supposition is too absurd to be entertained, even for a 
moment, by any one acquainted with the principles of pa¬ 
thology. 
“ But whilst it is thus perfectly clear that the death of 
these animals was in no way connected with the effects of 
lightning, I confess that the real cause of the evil remains 
somewhat obscure. Had I been called in earlier, this obscu¬ 
rity might possibly have been less. The cases were never 
seen by a qualified veterinary surgeon until I saw 7 them on 
the day on which the last one died, and no treatment, with 
the exception of a single dose of opening medicine, was ever 
adopted. Even the ordinary precautions to a sick animal of 
