SHEEP DISEASES : CAUSES, NATURE AND PREVENTION. 
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thriving he picks them up cramped and stiffened, and in a few 
days is mortified by seeing them die from louping-ill, swung-back 
(paralysis), joint-ill, or so called navel-ill. 
Cold and wet are especially injurious to parturient sheep and 
newly-born lambs ; and, if possible, lambing ewes should always 
be placed in dry situations ; or, if practicable, housed either by 
night or by day, or both, according to circumstances: and I 
would particularly impress the fact upon all breeders, that if the 
system of an animal is depressed by debilitating and lowering in¬ 
fluences it only requires that some existing cause such as this 
shall come into operation to call a latent disease into existence : 
it is iC the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.” Low forms 
of inflammation and congestion of the lungs, bronchitis especially, 
are induced by cold and wet in all animals whose systems are 
debilitated or whose blood is poor. 
Parturition is a prolific predisposing and exciting cause of 
disease, as at this period of an animal’s life there is a stage of 
great excitement followed by a corresponding degree of depres¬ 
sion : but, in addition, there is a large quantity of waste matter 
to be got rid of from the womb, and the system has to regain its 
original state; and all this at the expense of the constitution. 
There are many agencies of an adverse character against 
which an animal would successfully do battle under ordinary cir¬ 
cumstances, that overcome the vital energy when depressed by the 
lowering influences of parturition; especially is the system in¬ 
capable of fighting against the effects of putrefactive (septic) or¬ 
ganisms or their products, and the former lodging in the un¬ 
healthy fluids in the womb—which form a favorable pabulum for 
their growth—easily gain access to the circulation through tissues 
weakened by being supplied with impure or impoverished blood; 
the result is blood poisoning (septicaemia), septic inflammation of 
the womb, of the bowels, or of the udder, and death not only of 
the mother, but of the lamb ; the latter giving evidence also of 
septic inflammation of the umbilical vessels (naval-ill), and putre¬ 
factive diseases of the joints, much of which may be prevented 
by tying the cord at birth and by applying an antiseptic thereto. 
Not only during the rutting season, but onwards through the 
