369 
DIARRHOEAS OR “ SCOURS ” OF NURSLINGS. 
In calves, aside from causes just noted, may be considered 
the driving and worrying of the parent, an act that especially 
favors the production of tyrotoxicon in the milk. This and 
other forms of over-heating affecting the lacteral supply, are 
the causes of heavy mortality among infantile bovines. In 
nursling lambs, since ovines are possessed of most impression¬ 
able nervous systems, and consequently of little economic 
tonicity (general or nervous), diarrhoea is a most fatal disease, 
even when originating from causes that would be deemed 
practically harmless in other creatures ; it demands prompt 
attention and the closest care. The chief causes as before 
l i 
mentioned are, sudden changes of temperature, exposure, im¬ 
pure air dependent upon miasm and crowding, and over¬ 
heated sheds, cold drinks administered to the ewe, and, above 
all, the whole range of imperfect diet. 
TREATMENT. 
The indications are: First, to remove the poison and 
source of irritation ; Second , to restore to the secretions their 
normal constituents, thereby ensuring proper digestion ; 
Third , to combat such inflammation as may have arisen from 
poisoning and non-assimilation; Fourth, to restore to the 
economy at large, and as speedily as possible, that of which 
it has been deprived ; Fifth, when the discharges are so pro¬ 
fuse as to threaten collapse, or otherwise endanger the 
life of the creature, to check the same by the method that 
will most surely suppress the waste of serum, and least tend 
to absorption of toxics—ptomaines. These last two proposi¬ 
tions are in a great measure dependent upon the second, and 
indirectly, also, the third. 
To attempt to arrest the flux by means of astringents, 
singly or combined with opiates and antacids, is, as a rule, 
pernicious, since it tends to aid the very processes that it is 
desirable to suppress, viz., the absorption of ptomaines. There 
are cases, however, of extreme emergency, when suppression 
of the diarrhoea is imperative, but even these are not bene- 
fitted by astringents purely. Opiates relieve suffering, but 
also, when administered empirically and without due consid- 
