28 
JNO. A. BELL. 
them. So as soon as convenient I drove out to his farm, a 
few miles from the city, and found them about as he had de¬ 
scribed. They were swollen quite badly, some on the hind 
legs, some forward and some on both. The swelling extended 
about half way to the hock on the hind legs and to the knee 
forward, and in one instance above the knee, some much 
worse than others. Two were so sore that for the first two 
or three days they were unable to stand except for a few 
minutes at a time, and even after that they were lying down 
much of the time. Most of the time they would lie on their 
sides, evidently suffering considerable pain. The other promi¬ 
nent symptoms were; twitching of the muscles, drawing up 
of the feet, breathing a little faster than is natural, tempera¬ 
ture slightly below normal, pulse weak and slow, slight 
diarrhoea, appetite good except in the three worst cases, these 
latter not eating their usual allowance the first three or four 
days. 
Never having seen any cases that resembled these, I in¬ 
vestigated as to the possibility of their being frost-bitten, but 
soon concluded that nothing of that kind had occurred. I 
asked Mr. Waddley to come to the city again, as I did not 
have the necessary medicines. After perusing what literature 
I could find on the subject, which seemed to be quite limited, 
became quite positive and diagnosed it as ergotism. 
In about a week and a half sores began to appear around 
the ankles and knees of two of the animals, and a week later 
quite large portions of flesh had sloughed off around the 
ankle and knees, and one had sloughed its hoof. The hoof 
was sloughed without any suppuration. A few days after the 
hoof had sloughed I made another visit and found indications 
of a new growth of horn. At this time I learned that the 
second animal, in getting up, had broken over at the ankle 
and was standing on the inferior end of the metacarpal bone. 
The third one had the appearance of a frozen foot, half way to 
the hoof, perfectly dry and dead up to a certain point and 
perfectly healthy above, with the exception of a slight swell¬ 
ing near the line of demarkation. The animals at this time 
appeared to be perfectly healthy except as to the symptoms 
