356 
THOMAS WALLEY. 
cannot occur on dry lands, because there are no snails there— 
hence the value of draining; 2nd, that salt is a preventative, 
because it kills snails as also the embryos of the worm; 3rd, that 
rotten sheep should be at once slaughtered, their excrements 
mixed with lime or salt and the liver and intestines carefully 
destroyed. Its existence can be detected early by the victims 
thriving very rapidly and by the membrane of the eye contracting 
a yellow tinge (jaundice). 
Sturdy is due to the presence of a bladder worm in the brain 
and is so called because the animal is stupid, a synonymous term 
in Norfolk being dunt; and if the victim turns round to one side 
it is known as turn-sick , gid , &c.; while, owing to peculiarities 
of gait, affected sheep are often spoken of as “ sailors,” “trotters” 
and “ swervers.” 
The bladder worm, or hydatid, is the immature form of one 
of the tape-worms of the dog (the Taenia caenurus ) / it is known 
as the many-headed hydatid {Caenurus cerebralis) and sheep be¬ 
come the victims of it by taking into their stomachs, in the ordi¬ 
nary act of grazing, the eggs (containing embryos) of the tape¬ 
worm . 
The embryo ultimately finds its way to the brain either by the 
circulation or by boring, and sometimes it gains access to the 
spinal cord in the neck and produces the condition known as 
“ thorter-ill.” 
From the fact that in some districts a very large number of 
cases of sturdy are seen, I have been led to form the opinion that 
there must be some other host of the particular tape-worm than 
the dog, and of all animals the fox is the most likely. 
The treatment of sturdy is often very successful, both by sim¬ 
ple tapping and by extraction of the bladder-worm, but it is 
simple madness to allow a sheep to pine away with the disease, as 
many do, until it is useless; better by half kill it as soon as it 
shows symptoms of the disease and make the best of it. 
As to the prevention of sturdy, the first and most important 
thing to do is to carefully destroy the brains of affected sheep, 
instead, as is often done, throwing the “ bleb” to the dog to eat; 
and secondly, to keep dogs as free from tape-worm as possible. 
