POISONING OP PIGS BY DECOCTION OF DIGITALIS. 173 
The cattleman went to a pharmaceutical chemist and got 
the spots dressed with a preparation of mercury, and thus 
checked the further development of the disease. 
This subject is worthy of more notice from the profession 
than it gets, and papers such as we have recently been 
favoured with by Mr. Fleming are but too seldom met with 
in British veterinary, or other journals. 
ACCIDENTAL POISONING OF PIGS BY A 
DECOCTION OF DIGITALIS. 
By Harry Olver, M.R.C.V.S., Tamworth, Staffordshire. 
The following case having come under my notice, I 
thought that you might deem it worthy a place in your 
valuable journal the Veterinarian . Its interest, perhaps, 
chiefly centres in the circumstance of the danger of unquali¬ 
fied men using poisonous substances, for probably it will not 
add anything to the qualified veterinarian’s previous know¬ 
ledge of the action of digitalis. Still I trust a record of the 
facts may be useful as a warning to others in the disposal of 
poisonous agents. 
On Thursday, January 18th, Mr. J. German, of Broad 
Fields (about five miles from here), sent a message to request 
me to see some pigs which had been poisoned by foxglove 
(digitalis). On my arrival I received the following informa¬ 
tion :—it appears that Mr. German had an old cart horse, 
the subject of a skin disease, which annually causes a loss of 
the greater portion of his hair, accompanied by irritation. 
His waggoner (an old confidential servant) had been told 
that a decoction of foxglove would cure the horse, so last 
summer he obtained some leaves of digitalis, and dried them, 
and on the evening of the 17th of January he boiled the dry 
leaves with a certain quantity of water, with the intention 
of dressing the horse on the following morning with the 
decoction when cold. A servant in the morning requiring 
the saucepan, and not knowing what was in it, emptied the 
contents into the pig bucket, thus mixing the decoction with 
other food, which was shortly afterwards given to five pigs, 
two small ones in one sty and three larger ones in another. 
The smaller pigs had the greater quantity, and also the 
strongest portion, as that given to the three larger ones, which 
were fattening, was further diluted with wash and meal. 
