DIARRHOEAS OR “ SCOURS ” OF NURSLINGS. 321 
within bounds. And for this reason, a favorite milch cow, 
prolific in cream and butter, may prove the worst possible 
brood animal, and unable to rear healthy, sturdy offspring. 
In such a case benefit is had by removing the calf to another 
cow, one that fulfills the required conditions, or, better yet, 
hand-feeding with diluted and peptonized milk; as morning’s 
milk is much less abundant in casein than that of evening, 
restriction to the former often answers the required purpose. 
AETIOLOGY. 
Healthy sucklings possess a tendency to looseness of the 
bowels, their evacuations being normally fluid or semi-liquid. 
This obtains for two reasons—the condition of the intestinal 
tract, and the nature of the food. Again, peristalsis is ex¬ 
tremely active in the young; the blood vessels and lymphatics 
are most permeable; the transformation of surface cells rapid ; 
the inhibitory centers deficient in development; and, finally, 
there is greater reflex irritability. 
All these, taken in connection with the fact that the action 
of the sphincter ani is far from being firm or powerful—that 
faeces are not retained in the rectum or colon sufficiently long 
to permit of any absorption of fluid constituents—tend to ex¬ 
plain the predisposition to scours in the young. Atop of this 
concatenation, we may have the quantity of digestive fluids 
limited, or the supply of food ingested in excess, resulting in 
abnormal digestion, provoking fermentation, putrefaction, and 
irritation ; the putrefaction of albuminoids develops an ex¬ 
cess of ptomaines that, if absorbed, secure blood-poisoning, 
and nervous reflex irritation, irrespective of direct instant 
action upon the intestines. Bouchard declares that enough 
ptomaines are produced in twenty-four hours in the healthy 
animal, by the act of digestion, to procure its death, providing 
excretion was stopped and all absorbed; and T. Lauder Brun- 
ton asserts: “ The alkaloids which are obtained from the 
decomposition of albumen are one of the chief sources of di¬ 
arrhoeas.” The scours resultant upon “taking cold ” are due 
merely to the locking up of normal secretions, interfering 
with digestion to the production of ptomaines ; and the same 
