THE ETIOLOGY OF BLACKLEG, ETC. 
303 
p. 357 ,—“ There cannot be a doubt respecting either the 
nature or treatment of such a disease. It is at first of a 
purely inflammatory character, but the inflammation is so 
intense as speedily to destroy the powers of nature.” At 
p. 358, “ When the early part of the spring has been cold 
and ungenial, and then the warm weather has suddenly set 
in, nothing is so common as for inflammatory fever to appear; 
but the change in the temperature, or other qualities of the 
atmosphere, has had only an indirect effect in producing 
this; it is the sudden increase of nutriment which has done 
the mischief .” In that concise treatise on diseases forming 
the appendix of Mr. Finlay Dun’s admirable work on 
veterinary medicines, and which we may consider as an 
exposition of the opinions held by the late Professor Barlow, 
whose article in a former volume of Veterinarian I am sorry 
I have not at hand, this disease is said ( Splenic Apoplexy, 
p. 543) to result from the rapid manufacture of insufficiently 
elaborated blood, probably faulty in the healthy proportion 
of some of its constituents.” It appears on rich alluvial 
pastures, where the grass is abundant and nutritious, and 
the stocking light.” “ Cattle and sheep that have been 
previously stinted, and are being rapidly pushed along, are 
especially liable to it.” At p. 541, “ Blackleg appears to be 
indigenous to certain farms, usually where the land is un¬ 
drained, and the herbage coarse, rough, and innutritive; and 
has entirely disappeared from others, where drainage, top 
dressings, and better cultivation have improved the quality 
of the pasture.” Professor Strangeways included this ailment 
in his class of dietetic diseases, and uses also in his lectures 
on it the terms “ too rapid formation of imperfectly elaborated 
bloodand also states “ that there is a poison in the 
affected parts which may be communicated to man, and 
vice versa; he considers this to be formed locally by the 
change the tissues undergo.” In some notes, copies of 
originals taken of Professor M f Call’s lectures, that gentleman 
is made to say, “ When animals are reduced or emaciated, 
and then turned into luxuriant grasses, we get the animal 
plethoric, and as a sequel attacked with blackleg. The 
nature of the disease is admitted by all to be a blood disease, 
and it wants a general name. Youatt calls it inflammatory 
fever, but I prefer the term “ typhoid inflammatory fever.” 
The Veterinarian for July, 1871, contains in a paragraph on 
blackleg the following editorial remark :—“ Similar reports 
have reached us from other sources, some of which clearly 
show that the disease was evidently due to an improper use 
of highly stimulating food.” In a paper read before the 
