SHEEP DISEASES I CAUSES, NATURE AND PREVENTION. 
261 
so degraded, as it too often does, as to be unfit for use, it is passed 
out by the urine, in which it can be detected by glazing or var¬ 
nishing the skin of the hand when it is allowed to flow over it, or 
by subjecting it to heat, when it coagulates. Not only the albu¬ 
men but the coloring matter of the blood, when it is dissolved 
out of the cells, is passed off in the water; and this is the explan¬ 
ation of the color of the urine in the disease known as “red 
water ” in cattle, a condition not usually seen in the sheep be¬ 
cause in this animal the colored water of the blood is, curiously 
enough, thrown into the cavity of the abdomen, causing “ bloody 
dropsy of the belly ” (sanguineous ascites). 
Under certain circumstances, the kidneys excrete enormous 
quantities of clear water, constituting diabetes ; but this is not 
noticed so much—except by observant shepherds—in the sheep 
as in the horse. In the latter animal it is frequently caused by 
mouldy bad foods, by mow-burnt hay and grass, or hay grown with 
excessive quantities of nitrate of soda. Diabetes, if unchecked, 
kills by exhaustion.* 
The spleen (melt) and the lymphatic glands (kernels) are also 
of great importance to animals, for by them the white cells of the 
blood are manufactured, and in certain diseases the quantity of 
white cells becomes so excessive as to far outnumber the red cells 
, constituting “ white cell blood ” (leucocytosis) and producing 
emaciation and death. The spleen is influenced injuriously by 
fever poisons and by the organisms of “ anthrax,” in which disease 
it is often the first organ to become affected. The spleen probably 
serves other purposes than that of manufacturing white cells; as 
iron, soda, and phosphates, with various extractive matters, are 
found in tolerable quantity in its ash when it is burned. 
The lungs are of the greatest possible importance to life, and 
any interference with their function exercises an injurious influence 
upon the whole of the system and more particularly on the blood 
and the brain, as it is through their agency that carbonic acid is 
got rid of from the blood and oxygen supplied to it; or, in other 
* During the last winter the author has frequently detected degeneration of the 
kidneys in the carcasses of sheep which had suffered from water braxy. He 
pointed out this condition in similar cases many years ago. 
