856 CONSUMPTION. 
it which cannot be mistaken. It is so with re- 
gard to cattle. That veterinary surgeon is igno- 
rant of his profession, who does not at once, and 
at a distance, recognise the cough which, although 
it may not precisely indicate phthisis, betrays a 
state of the lungs pregnant with danger. 
many a beast might the farmer save if he would 
be attentive to this! A bullock hooses: if the 
cough is sonorous and clear, the lung is not yet 
fatally injured. That cough, however, must not 
be neglected long. It tells of inflammation; it 
is the product of inflammation,—and of inflam- 
mation that may be silently, but rapidly, disor- 
ganizing the lungs. The prudent man will not 
suffer such a cough to continue many days with- 
out giving a mash or a dose of physic, or per- 
chance bleeding and inserting a seton.” Yet 
soundly economical conduct in reference to 
| phthisis in cattle, is either to prevent it, or, in- 
stantly on its detection, to commence fattening 
the subject of it for the shambles. An ox ora 
cow, in the merely initial stages of consumption, 
will fatten almost as rapidly and perhaps quite 
as soundly as if every organ were in perfect 
health ; and many an animal on being killed and 
cut up by the butcher, proves to have lost, from 
erosive waste, a large portion of its lungs. To 
save a phthisical beast, therefore, is rather to pre- 
vent the loss of its market value, than to protect 
or prolong its life. 
Consumption in sheep is exceedingly frequent; 
but, in an economical sense, is vastly better un- 
derstood than consumption in cattle. The ear- 
liest indication of consumption in sheep is very 
generally made the occasion of killing the animal 
or sending it to the butcher; so that the disease 
is seldom seen in its advanced stages or in a fully 
developed condition. The usual treatment of 
sheep, when suffering catarrh, is very bad, and 
entails diseases of the lungs upon a far larger 
proportion of flocks than is commonly imagined. 
A sheep with a recently contracted cough loses 
neither flesh nor appetite, and is therefore treated 
as if he were in perfect health; he continues to 
be exposed to wet and cold; he is shorn at the 
same time as the rest of the flock, without re- 
gard to either the weather or his own disorder ; 
and he, in consequence, passes almost as certainly 
| and rapidly into consumption as if his shepherd 
had intended to inflict the disease. Let a more 
rational method be practised; let a sheep, on 
contracting a cold, be removed to a sheltered 
situation; let him, if the symptoms be violent, 
receive all the aids to recovery which his shep- 
herd can afford; and if afterwards, and in spite 
of this, he exhibit symptoms of consumption, let 
him with all speed be devoted to slaughter. See 
the article Cararru.—Blaine’s Velerinary Art.— 
Barilet’s Farriery.— Youatt on the Horse.—Clater’s 
Cattle Doctor.—Journal of the Royal Agricultural 
Society.— White's Veterinary.— Youatt on Catile. 
CONSUMPTION. The gradual enfeeblement 
and eventual wasting away and death of a plant. 
How | 
CONTRACT. 
This must be viewed less as any one disease, than 
as the common or aggregate character of a num- 
ber of diseases. It originates variously in too 
frequent and profuse flowering, in bad planting, 
in mechanical damage to the roots, in poverty of | 
soil, in excessive drought, in severe and sudden 
vicissitudes of weather, in unusually tempestuous 
winds, and probably in some other causes equally 
distinct; and it may be supposed to have a va- 
riety in its modes of action or in its distinctive 
nosological characters corresponding to the va- 
riety of these causes. The preventive of most 
kinds of it is manifestly good culture. 
CONTORTION. The effect of the injury in- | 
flicted on the leaves of plants by the puncture of 
insects, particularly of the aphides. The leaves 
of the peach, the apricot, the nectarine, and the 
apple-tree, are very liable to contortion. The 
only sure preventive of the evil is to destroy the 
little creatures which cause it. See the articles 
Apruis and Insxcr. 
CONTRACT. An agreement or covenant be- 
tween two or more persons, in which each party 
binds himself to do or forbear some act, and each 
acquires a right to what the other promises. 
Natural law requires that if one person accepts 
from another a service, he should render to him 
something in return, whether this be expressly 
agreed upon, or only implied from the nature of 
the undertaking. 
receive the thing stipulated for, he suffers wrong. 
We may go further, and say, that confidence in 
promises is so essential to the existence of social 
intercourse among men, that even the bare pro- 
mise of one of the parties, when given and re- 
ceived in earnest, that is, with the idea of its | 
being binding, is not entirely destitute of the 
force of obligation. In every state, it will be 
necessary to retain these principles, since the 
idea of justice implanted in the human mind 
should not be violated. It is the part of legisla- 
tion to provide for special cases, to establish cer- 
tain forms, and to fix, according to rules founded 
upon experience, the effects of each promise ; also 
to withdraw from certain contracts their natural 
obligation, or to determine this in others, in 
which it is uncertain according to natural law. 
Such has been the course of the Roman law, 
which, by its consistency and justice in regard 
to contracts, has obtained, on the continent of 
Kurope, almost universal authority. In that 
law, at an early period, a contract in the proper 
sense of the word, was an agreement binding on 
both parties. It was required to be in a deter- 
minate form; and there was an equally deter- 
minate mode of impeaching it. A contract was 
distinguished from a simple pact or promise; and 
it was a fundamental doctrine, that a simple pact 
would not entitle one to maintain a legal action, 
but merely to raise an objection in defence. The 
Mutual promises of future | 
good offices also are binding, at least by the na- | 
tural law, if one of the contracting parties has | 
thereby been induced to act; for, if he does not | 
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